This weekly update shows how AI agents are changing the marketing world in both good and challenging ways.

AI Agents Are Taking Over Marketing Tasks

Smart companies around the world are now using AI agents - computer helpers that can work by themselves to do marketing jobs. These aren't just simple chatbots. They're advanced AI systems that can create ads, write emails, and even talk to customers without human help. Research shows that AI agents now make up 17% of all business value from AI in 2025. This number is expected to jump to 29% by 2028.

The companies doing this best are called "future-built" companies. Only about 5% of all companies fall into this group, but they're seeing amazing results. These smart companies get five times more revenue increases and three times more cost savings compared to other businesses. They're planning to spend 26% more on technology next year, with most of that money going to AI agents.

New Video Tools Flood the Market

This week brought big news from tech companies. OpenAI launched Sora, a new tool that lets anyone create short videos just by typing what they want to see. Almost immediately after, Meta (the company behind Instagram and Facebook) released their own competing tool called Vibes. Both tools are designed to help people make marketing videos quickly and easily.

While these tools sound helpful, they're also creating problems. Social media platforms like LinkedIn are already getting filled up with low-quality AI videos that don't add much value. Marketing experts worry that soon our news feeds, YouTube, and email inboxes will be full of this automatically-made content.

The Problem with AI "Slop"

Experts are calling bad AI content "AI slop" - referring to content that's made quickly by AI but doesn't help people. Many workers now receive 50 or more AI-made marketing emails every day from companies trying to sell them things. A recent study found that 40% of workers have received this type of low-quality content in the past month.

The impact on workplace productivity is serious. Workers spend an average of 1 hour and 56 minutes dealing with each piece of bad AI content they encounter. This costs companies about $186 per employee per month in lost productivity. Even worse, when people know their coworkers are using AI poorly, they start to trust them less and think they're not as creative or smart.

What Smart Companies Do Differently

The companies succeeding with AI agents follow a clear playbook. They don't just throw AI at every problem. Instead, they use AI agents for specific tasks where they can add real value. These future-built companies allocate 15% of their AI budgets specifically to AI agents. About one-third of these companies are already using AI agents actively, compared to only 12% of other companies.

Experts say the key is developing two important skills: complex problem solving and curiosity. This means using AI to gather information and then adding human thinking to make it useful. It also means asking follow-up questions to make AI results better and more relevant.

Investment Money Flows to AI Marketing

The financial world is paying attention to AI marketing success. Investment funds focused on AI marketing have seen strong growth, with some funds gaining over 40% this year. This shows that investors believe AI agents and marketing automation will continue to be profitable.

What This Means Going Forward

The gap between companies using AI agents well and those that aren't is getting bigger every month. Companies that started early with AI agents are now pulling away from their competitors by reinvesting their AI profits into even better technology. The message for business leaders is clear: the time to start using AI agents effectively is now, before the gap becomes too wide to close.

The challenge for marketers is learning to use these powerful tools without creating more noise and low-quality content that people will ignore.