AI governance without strategy is setting marketing teams up to fail
Marketing organizations are racing to adopt AI while simultaneously trying to contain it. About 76.6% of marketers now have AI policies in place, up from 55.3% just a year earlier, per the Association of National Advertisers’ January 2026 survey. Investment is also surging, with nearly 89% planning to increase AI spending, and two-thirds maintaining that investment even during an economic downturn.
Despite this appearance of control, more than half of marketers report feeling overwhelmed by the pace of AI change. Organizations are governing AI adoption without first planning for it, building guardrails around a road that has not been mapped. This is resulting in “governance theater” – the appearance of control without the substance of strategy.
The ANA data reveals a critical gap between governance activity and strategic execution. While 76.6% have established AI policies and 52.7% have formed cross-functional steering committees, nearly half of organizations lack formal AI planning horizons, and 71.6% haven’t established ROI targets for their AI investments. This lack of planning infrastructure is leading to a collection of restrictions without direction and boundaries without destinations.
Only 1.1% of organizations surveyed achieve both high measurement sophistication and high ROI expectations, indicating a systems failure. Organizations are deploying AI tools, establishing usage policies, and forming oversight committees, all while lacking the fundamental capability to connect investment to outcomes.
The investment-value disconnect is also a major issue. Marketing organizations are pouring resources into AI with remarkable conviction, but this confidence doesn’t seem to come from demonstrated strategic value. When asked about the primary value AI delivers, 60.9% of marketers point to time efficiency, and their near-term expectations cluster around tactical execution. This pattern should feel familiar to anyone who’s tracked martech adoption over the past decade, where organizations accumulate tools, pursue efficiencies, and wonder why utilization rates stagnate.
The ANA research identifies four behavioral segments within marketing organizations, with the largest group being strategic governors – marketers with 12+ years of experience who should be guiding AI adoption with wisdom earned from previous technology cycles. However, they exhibit the highest confidence in their organization’s AI journey, while also reporting being the most overwhelmed. This is a symptom of a larger issue, where confidence without strategic planning is just hope dressed in professional language.
To move forward, organizations need to reverse the sequence: planning before governance, strategy before scale. This involves establishing planning horizons, ROI targets, cross-functional planning, and measurement sophistication. The path forward isn’t mysterious, but it requires a fundamental shift in how organizations approach AI adoption.
By treating AI planning as the prerequisite to AI governance, organizations can build systems that drive value, rather than just accumulating tools. The question isn’t whether to invest in AI, but whether to invest strategically or speculatively, with planning or with hope. Policies can’t save an organization from a strategy it never developed, and it’s time for marketing teams to prioritize planning before governance.
