Despite risk-management challenges, 14% of 405 senior marketing technologists participating in a Gartner survey said they have invested in tools based on generative artificial intelligence (GAI), but another 63% said they plan to do the same within the next 24 months. Just slightly more than half see greater reward than risk.

The data is part of the 2023 Gartner Marketing Technology Survey, which explores how marketing technologies enable outcomes and impact the use of these technologies on martech investments.

The study includes organizational strategies used to develop marketing technology capabilities, as well as the growing interest in emerging technologies to support marketing strategies.

Decisions around marketing technology — from vendor selection to implementation — continue to shift into IT departments within an organization. And it is obvious why, with technology like GAI supporting many of the marketing functions now being used.

Survey participants said the acquisition of martech budgets is a joint responsibility between marketing and IT. Some 32% said marketing leads with guidance from IT, where as 19% said IT leads with guidance from marketing.

The creation of marketing technology roadmaps, for the most part, remains the responsibility of both areas. Some 29% of participants said marketing owns the activity, while 29% said marketing leads with guidance from IT, and 20% said IT leads with guidance from marketing.

Capabilities such as customer data management also have moved from marketing to IT, as 78% of organizations report centralizing customer data management in information technology units.

Changing the way employees think across organizations, especially in marketing, requires a focus on capabilities instead of shiny technologies. More technology requires a higher understanding.

Gartner outlines several impediments to this logic, but the fourth most common named by survey respondents will cause the most concern in years to come. The difficulty in identifying and recruiting martech talent.

Today’s shallow talent pool and tomorrow’s generation of technologies drive talent gaps and a lack of capacity to facilitate the change to which a large share of organizations aspire. Sixty-two percent of respondents said the current technology and talent environment needs so much attention that they won’t be able to spare resources to pursue using new emerging technologies like GAI.

Another 53% of respondents said they are too overwhelmed by existing technologies and projects to explore emerging technology, and 59% said their struggle with existing tech gives them little appetite to add emerging tech.

Martech teams are struggling, according to Gartner. About 62% agree the availability of skilled talent limits their understand or use of emerging technologies. Some 59% of IT policies or strategies constrain use of emerging technologies, and 59% struggle with integrating existing technology so much so that it provides little reason to add it. Forty-seven percent also said customers are not rapid adopters of emerging technology, so they have little interest.

Despite risk-management challenges, 14% of senior marketing technologists in a Gartner survey said they have invested in tools based on generative AI and another 63% said they plan to do so within the next 24 months, while just slightly more than half see greater reward than risk.