McKinsey defines AI 2.0; Positionless Marketing delivers it

The ancient Greek poet Archilochus once wrote a line that has echoed through 28 centuries and now appears in every Navy SEAL manual and leadership speech: We do not rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training. That insight captures the current state of marketing with artificial intelligence. Expectations are massive. Training is sparse. Every vendor offers an AI feature, every conference features an AI keynote, and every analyst provides a framework. Meanwhile, marketing teams are expected to deliver more growth, more personalization, and more efficiency with the same headcount.

According to Gartner, CMOs now allocate an average of 15.3% of their marketing budgets to AI. Yet only 30% of marketing organizations report mature or fully developed AI readiness. The budget exists. The readiness does not. This defines the AI overwhelm that characterizes marketing in 2026. The most critical question for marketing leaders is not “what AI should we buy?” It is “are we actually capturing the value of what we have already bought?”

A May 2025 study commissioned by Optimove, titled “Forrester Opportunity Snapshot AI: Accelerating Marketing Impact Through AI And Agile Workflows,” reinforces this gap. Only 39% of marketers use AI for content creation, 37% for campaign workflows, and just 14% for building audience segments. The highest-impact functions show the lowest adoption.

The McKinsey diagnosis

In the revised book “Rewired: How Leading Companies Win with Technology and AI,” McKinsey authors argue that most companies approach AI incorrectly. They chase isolated pilots. They confuse experimentation with transformation. They fail to capture measurable value because they have not rewired how their organization operates.

McKinsey identifies six capabilities that separate companies capturing value from those merely spending money on AI:

1. Transformation roadmap. Move beyond isolated pilots. Link every digital and AI initiative to concrete financial value and strategic goals. If you cannot connect an AI tool to a P&L outcome, it does not belong.If your marketing organization is honest, you will find gaps in at least three of these six. That is not failure. It is the starting point.From AI 1.0 to AI 2.0AI 1.0 was the productivity era. Tools wrote faster, generated faster, summarized faster, and executed faster. For teams that did it well, productivity translated into real results. Campaigns shipped at customer speed. Messages landed at the right moment.AI 2.0 is the business outcomes era. It builds on AI 1.0 but measures success differently. Not by time saved. By revenue gained, conversion lifted, retention earned, and customer relationships deepened.Gartner’s data is clear. Only one in three CMOs see the returns they expect from AI investments. Most focus on efficiency and measure time saved. High-performing CMOs prioritize business outcomes. They measure conversion rates, customer satisfaction, retention, and revenue impact.Organizations automating more marketing work are twice as likely to see ROI from AI. Yet short-term productivity gains rarely translate into meaningful results unless you intentionally measure and optimize for impact.By 2028, Gartner predicts that only 10% of CMOs focusing on time savings over business outcomes will secure budget for strategic goals. That is the wake-up call. CMOs measuring AI by hours saved will lose budget arguments to those measuring by revenue gained.The most AI-ready marketing leaders allocate 21.3% of budgets to AI, compared to the average of 15.3%. Investment scales with readiness. Readiness scales with the discipline to measure outcomes.What this looks like in practiceWe have seen this transition for teams that have done the rewiring. A leading iGaming operator offers a telling example. The team cut campaign execution time from five days to five minutes by combining a unified data foundation with agentic AI for decisioning and orchestration. That was a real productivity gain. It translated directly into business results because the team could deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time.That is AI 1.0. Real efficiency with real customer-facing impact. It is the foundation for the next horizon.AI 1.0 built the capability. AI 2.0 builds on it.The Positionless futureMarketing teams winning in AI 2.0 are Positionless. They are not locked into rigid roles where data analysts hand off to campaign managers who hand off to creatives who hand off to optimization specialists. They are teams where any marketer can do any task, supported by AI that meets them wherever they work.That is the rewiring that matters for marketing.This is why AI is integrated inside, outside, and on top of the platform. It ensures marketing teams are rewired and realize the power of Positionless Marketing. Native AI operates inside the platform. MCPs extend AI into external tools marketers already use. AI-powered custom applications sit on top of the platform for client-specific needs.Three pillars. One execution layer. The marketer chooses where to start. The platform holds the work together.The marketers who capture value from AI are not those with the most tools. They are those with the right operating model, data foundation, talent, and platform to make everything work together.The question is not whether your company will be rewired for AI. The question is whether you will rewire it on purpose or wait for the market to do it for you.Archilochus knew the answer 28 centuries ago. We do not rise to our expectations. We fall to our training.It is time to train.By Pini Yakuel, CEO, Optimove