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Artificial intelligence is gaining ground in retail marketing and advertising departments, where companies are already using it to generate content, recommend products, place ads, and tailor campaigns to the characteristics of individual consumers. Content creation for marketing and advertising is the leading AI use case in digital commerce, at 67%, according to the report State of AI in Retail and Consumer Packaged Goods: 2026 Trends, published by NVIDIA.
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How are marketing departments using artificial intelligence?
Content creation tops the list of use cases identified by NVIDIA in digital commerce, but it is not the only application. Some 58% use recommendation systems, while 54% apply AI to marketing and advertising placement.
Another 52% use adaptive advertising, and 50% employ customer service assistants.
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The data shows that artificial intelligence applications are beginning to cover different stages of the relationship between brands and consumers. A company can use these systems to produce campaign materials and subsequently employ algorithms to determine which product to recommend, which advertisement to display, or how to modify a message based on user behavior.
The report indicates that digital commerce, which includes ecommerce, marketing, and advertising, is one of the main areas being transformed by AI. Some 61% of respondents said they use AI in this category, compared with the previously recorded 57%.
AI is driving increasingly personalized advertising
One trend gaining momentum is the use of AI agents, systems capable of reasoning, planning, and executing certain actions with greater autonomy than traditional tools.
Among organizations implementing AI agents, 48% use them for personalized marketing and advertising. These systems can analyze information, act on it, adjust messages, recommend products, and guide purchasing decisions based on each customer’s context.
Personalization also extends to the product discovery process. NVIDIA identifies catalog enrichment, used by 42%, as an application that enables companies to dynamically improve and localize product information through text, images, and video.
Shopping assistants account for 31% and can be used to guide consumers through product discovery and purchasing in a personalized way.
Marketing is now part of a broader AI strategy
The transformation of advertising is taking place as artificial intelligence moves beyond isolated projects. The report indicates that 91% of retail and consumer packaged goods companies are already using or evaluating AI, while 58% say they have actively deployed it.
The technologies being prioritized also illustrate the scale of this transformation. Both data analytics and generative AI and large language models have reached 66% among the AI technologies being used or evaluated, while agentic AI stands at 47%.
This growth is supported by business expectations. Some 89% of respondents say artificial intelligence has had a positive impact on their revenue, while 95% report that it helps reduce annual costs.
For marketing departments, the study’s findings point to a new phase. AI is no longer used solely to accelerate the creation of advertising materials: It is beginning to play a role in audience selection, product recommendations, ad placement, message personalization, and customer service.
