Marketing AI Initiatives to Shrink by One-Third by 2027
Brands plan to hire more staff to handle customer experience as AI costs rise.
Updated on Oct. 22, 2026 in Spending
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By 2027, B2C marketing leaders are projected to cut one-third of their AI initiatives while increasing customer experience staff by 20 percent. This pivot reflects a growing corporate focus on managing rising deployment costs and prioritizing human-generated content.
Why it matters
Rising artificial intelligence costs are putting pressure on marketing budgets, forcing companies to move away from purely automated projects. Businesses are now pivoting toward strategies that demonstrate measurable value and balance efficiency with content authenticity.
Forrester projects that marketing leaders will scale back one-third of AI initiatives by 2027 while simultaneously increasing customer experience staffing by 20%. These shifts follow two years of team reductions and address rising usage-based pricing for automated workflows.
The players
Forrester
A research and advisory firm that tracks marketing technology trends and enterprise AI spending.
The details
Marketing technology suppliers are increasingly shifting toward usage-based pricing models that charge companies for each agent interaction, generated asset, and automated workflow. As these costs mount, firms are scaling back AI deployments that lack clear returns in favor of human-led customer experience teams. Additionally, half of brands are expected to prioritize human-generated content to maintain quality and authenticity standards.
Timeline
Companies spent the two-year period leading up to 2025 reducing customer experience teams.
B2C marketing leaders are projected to scale back AI initiatives by one-third in 2027.
Customer experience staffing is expected to rise by 20 percent in 2027.
Money Landscape
This pivot marks a correction to the recent trend of replacing human staff with automated AI tools. It highlights the rising cost of usage-based software models relative to the long-term overhead of human-led customer experience teams.
Consumers may notice a transition toward more human-led customer support as brands rebalance their staffing. These changes could impact the quality and personalization of service interactions for those engaging with brands moving to human-generated content.
The takeaway
As companies prioritize human-generated content, expect brands to market their service interactions differently. Monitor your preferred retailers for changes in how they handle customer inquiries to see if they transition back to human-managed support teams.
Further reading
For more on how shifts in corporate strategy impact household costs and services, visit our Spending section.
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Do you trust companies that rely more on AI automation than human staff for customer service?
