November 04, 2025
New Report Reveals Why AI Isn’t Solving Retail Marketing Bottlenecks
Despite widespread adoption, marketers report that growing content demands are outpacing their ability to produce and distribute campaigns through AI. Does the issue lie in how companies are using AI or the technology itself?
Typeface’s new Signal Report: Retail Edition finds that 83% of retail teams have adopted AI tools, yet campaign speed and scale remain persistent bottlenecks.
Every leader surveyed said content needs are growing faster than teams’ ability to keep up. Still, the problem isn’t the technology itself. Many AI tools are deployed individually, which leads to fragmented workflows. Marketing teams have the capability, but not the organisation to deploy it systematically. AI, it seems, is only as fast as the processes it’s plugged into.
Inconsistencies across Organisation Levels
Personalisation is one area where AI shows real promise. Whether it’s tailored content or predicting interests, AI contributes to more unique experiences and, ultimately, higher customer satisfaction.
Around 65% of marketers report tailoring content at the segment level, creating campaigns that feel relevant to different audiences. But even here, success is inconsistent. Seventy-two percent say AI is used primarily at the individual level, leaving broader collaborative benefits largely untapped. Many teams are still piloting AI agents, and 76% have not yet scaled their automation across the organisation.
Time is the biggest challenge for marketing teams, since multi-channel campaigns take three to four weeks to launch for most teams, despite 86% of leaders aiming for two weeks or less. Marketing departments are under pressure to move faster, but fragmented processes and isolated AI tools slow them down. On top of that, tight budgets are another challenge: 96% of leaders report at least some difficulty justifying spend internally, and 26% describe this as a major struggle.
All You Need Is Efficiency
More than half of respondents have reduced reliance on external agencies thanks to AI, and 70% believe full automation could eliminate most agency spend. Yet trimming costs doesn’t automatically speed campaigns. Organisational barriers like disconnected teams, siloed workflows, and unclear processes are still holding back true efficiency.
According to the report, retailers can achieve meaningful personalisation and efficiency gains, but only when systems, processes, and people are aligned. Until then, campaigns remain slow, fragmented, and far from real-time.
“When AI is used in silos, you get faster outputs, not better outcomes. The real unlock for retailers comes when AI becomes invisible — embedded into the way teams plan, create, and collaborate. That’s where speed and creativity finally meet at scale,” said Jason Ing, Chief Marketing Officer at Typeface.
