How leaders can drive profitable growth through marketing in the AI era
PwC and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) are reimagining marketing’s role through joint research, activations, and C-suite collaboration—equipping leaders to demonstrate enterprise value, strengthen C-suite alignment, and harness AI to accelerate profitable growth.
AI is rewriting the economics of growth
AI gives leaders a choice: use it to extract cost from marketing—or to compound enterprise value. The difference lies in how finance, marketing, and technology govern growth in the AI era.
Growth, measured differently
Our research with the ANA shows that companies excelling across marketing execution, brand strength, and profitability deliver 79% higher total shareholder returns than peers. That makes marketing less a discretionary cost and more a capital allocation decision with measurable impact on enterprise value. With the right governance and metrics, CFOs can team with CMOs to help ensure AI amplifies long-term returns—not just short-term margin.
AI-driven efficiency gains in marketing can range from 20% to 50%, but efficiency alone doesn’t create durable advantage. When AI is embedded into measurement, insight generation, and personalization, it becomes a strategic growth capability rather than a cost-reduction layer. Technology leaders are essential to ensuring AI scales effectiveness across the enterprise—not just output.
Organizations that align finance, marketing, and technology around a shared growth model significantly outperform—delivering 79% higher shareholder returns than peers. AI accelerates whatever operating model is in place, making leadership alignment the defining factor between short-term efficiency gains and sustained competitive advantage. In the AI era, growth is no longer functional—it’s an enterprise discipline.
Our joint research with the ANA shows that when execution effectiveness, brand strength, and profitability work together, returns compound—driving 79% higher shareholder returns. AI gives CMOs the ability to scale creative quality, precision, and relevance, but only when those gains are tied to business outcomes. Done right, marketing becomes a disciplined growth engine—not a budget to defend.
“When AI is governed against the P&L and owned jointly with finance, it stops being hype. That discipline unlocked $500M in savings and funded a 3x faster path from idea to market.”
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