The number that should make you uncomfortable. 

A survey of 911 marketing professionals found that 96% are using AI in their roles. Sounds great. Except: only 2.66% of those same professionals identify as AI experts. The vast majority sit somewhere between "I know how to open ChatGPT" and "I've taken two webinars."

That's not an AI strategy. That's a subscription layer with a training gap underneath it. 

Here's what that looks like in practice: your team is generating more content, faster, with less oversight, and your results aren't improving. You're running AI-assisted campaigns with the same creative briefs, the same audience segments, and the same measurement frameworks you had in 2023. The AI is making you faster at the wrong thing. 

Meanwhile, the RevSure study of 306 B2B GTM leaders found that 76% are actively deploying agentic AI. But 47% say lead quality and data reliability are their biggest barriers. That's not an AI problem — that's a competency problem dressed up as a technology problem.

Marketing technology has always had this problem: teams buy the capability before they build the understanding. You see it every time a new platform goes mainstream. Everyone gets access. A few people figure out how to actually use it well. The rest tick the box.

The difference with AI is the speed at which this plays out and the size of the gap it creates. If you're running AI-assisted copy against a competitor who's built genuine AI competency — someone who understands prompt engineering, knows how to evaluate outputs critically, and has integrated AI into actual workflow decisions — you're not competing on equal footing. You're running the same tools at different skill levels and wondering why their numbers look better. 

The fix isn't another AI tool. It's a skills audit.

Map your team against three tiers:

Most teams have a lot of light users, a handful of practitioners, and almost no experts. That's fine — for now. What's not fine is having no plan to move people up the ladder.

Build a monthly 30-minute skill-share where one person teaches something specific they've learned. Not a vendor webinar. A practitioner on your team showing exactly how they used AI to solve a real problem last week. That's how you start closing the gap without a budget line.

AI teams, developers, and product innovators… are you ready to build smarter and ship faster? Narrow is an automated prompt engineering and optimization platform that takes the guesswork out of working with large language models. Instead of spending hours writing, testing, and tuning prompts, Narrow does it for you — generating high-quality prompts, testing them across models, and continuously optimizing for performance, cost, and speed.

What you’ll love:
💬 Automatically generate and refine expert-level prompts
🧪 Test and compare performance across multiple LLMs
📉 Reduce AI costs by up to 95% with smarter model selection
⏰ Deploy AI features up to 10× faster than manual workflows

Whether you’re building AI-powered products, scaling LLM features, or just want to get more value from your AI stack — Narrow streamlines your workflow so you can focus on innovation, not iteration. Learn more and book a demo today at getnarrow.ai

💰 ChatGPT ads are live and they cost $60 CPM
Criteo joined OpenAI's ChatGPT advertising pilot, giving ~17,000 advertisers access at $60 CPM — roughly 3x Meta rates. Entry requires a $200K minimum. Watch-and-wait for most B2B teams, but worth tracking if your buyer uses ChatGPT for research (they do).

🛑 "Stop marketing to a funnel" — Ashley Faus at B2BMX 2026
Atlassian's Head of Lifecycle Marketing keynoted B2BMX this week with a direct challenge to the linear funnel. Modern buyers don't move through stages — they orbit your content, returning to the same ideas from different angles. Read this before you rebuild your next nurture sequence.

🏆 Forrester named its B2B data provider leaders for Q1 2026
The Forrester Wave: Marketing and Sales Data Providers for B2B is out. If you're auditing your data stack this quarter, read this before renewing anything.

The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Anniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.

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