AI marketing study Switzerland: Almost 80 percent use AI every day
A national research initiative is investigating how Swiss marketing teams are using artificial intelligence. The AI Marketing Study Switzerland provides representative data on adoption, time savings, governance and the remaining maturity gaps for the first time.
AI marketing study Switzerland: widespread use, but structural gaps
The AI Marketing Study Switzerland provides the first representative data on how organizations in Switzerland use artificial intelligence in marketing. Initiated by Brandfinity in collaboration with Swiss Marketing, HEG Fribourg, PME Magazine and M&K (Markt & Kommunikation), it is a national research initiative that sheds light on strategy, data readiness, automation, AI governance and performance measurement. Around 200 marketing and sales managers from German-, French- and Italian-speaking Switzerland took part voluntarily and anonymously.
According to the consortium, it combines academic rigor, industry expertise, media reach and methodological credibility. The aim is to provide objective, transparent and comparable data so that marketing and sales managers can better understand their AI maturity and strategically manage technological acceleration.
Daily AI usage at a high level
Almost 80 percent of respondents state that AI is used within their marketing teams on a daily basis. There are clear regional differences: In German-speaking Switzerland, this figure is 85 percent, in French-speaking Switzerland 71 percent and in Ticino 50 percent. Across all sectors, the education sector stands out with 87%, followed by industry with 80% and healthcare with 75%. The automotive sector brings up the rear with 50%.
With regard to the proportion of AI-generated marketing content, a differentiated picture emerges: 34% of respondents create between 10% and 30% of their content with AI, 32% between 31% and 60%. Only four percent produce more than 91 percent of their content with the help of AI. The majority therefore use AI as a supporting tool and not as a complete replacement for human production.
Time savings available, but hardly measured
When it comes to the time savings achieved through AI, it is striking that 49% of participants do not yet actively measure the time saved. Of those who do, 19 percent save around six hours per week, 16 percent between three and six hours and 15 percent up to three hours. Larger companies with more than 10,000 or between 250 and 999 employees have particularly high AI usage rates in content production.
SEO customization and new fields of application
61% of those surveyed are already adapting their SEO approach to AI-supported search engines, with only 19% systematically carrying out this optimization. In the area of A/B testing, 14 percent actively use AI, while 18 percent are experimenting with it. In personalization, eight percent report a measurable effect, 29 percent use AI to some extent. In customer support, 17 percent work with AI agents to some extent and four percent with fully autonomous AI agents.
Governance and training as key weaknesses of the AI Marketing Study Switzerland
Although almost 90 percent of respondents confirm that AI influences their work and creativity, there are significant maturity gaps in organizational embedding. 49% offer no formal prompt engineering training and 64% of management teams are not yet trained to monitor AI workflows. Nevertheless, 48 percent have mandatory verification processes for AI-generated content, and 54 percent of teams maintain regular or occasional exchange formats for AI.
In terms of marketing workflows, 31% have already redesigned central processes with AI, while 32% are currently in the process of transformation.
Data quality as a hurdle
43% of respondents say their data is not clean or standardized - a significant barrier to scaled AI deployment. Only 17% have clean and accessible data, and only 13% have a fully integrated customer view. When it comes to reporting, 71 percent of teams are still without automatic dashboard updates, and only five percent have fully automated reporting.
The study shows that Swiss marketing teams are currently moving from AI experimentation to AI operationalization. According to the study, the key challenge is to translate daily AI use into structured, measurable and scalable processes.
Further information on the study can be found at https://www.brandfinity.ch.
