What we’re reading this week: The State of AI in Marketing 2026, a Southeast Asia research report from MMA (Marketing + Media Alliance) and Decision Lab, published June 2026 sharing insights about AI marketing.
We flip through a lot of industry reports so you don’t have to. This one’s worth your actual attention.
Marketers in Southeast Asia are no longer asking “should we use AI?” More than half now call themselves advanced users of it, and most say it’s baked into how they plan their marketing month to month. That part isn’t surprising anymore.
What is worth sitting with: almost everyone is using AI, but almost no one is using it well. Most businesses have stopped at “it saves me time.” Very few have gotten to “it’s actually growing my business.” That gap between using AI and getting real value from it is where the opportunity sits right now — especially if you’re running a small or growing business and don’t have a marketing department doing this thinking for you.
Here’s what stood out to us, and what we’d actually do about each one.
Owning the tool isn’t the same as using it well
The businesses pulling ahead aren’t the ones with the fanciest AI subscriptions. They’re the ones actually applying it consistently — in their content, their customer insights, their day-to-day decisions. A lot of people have ChatGPT open in a tab and still aren’t using it for anything that moves the needle.
If there’s one task in your business you keep putting off — writing captions, answering the same customer questions, drafting your monthly update — that’s the one to hand to AI first. Not “when you have time.” Every time.
Content is still the easiest place to start
Of everything measured in the report, generative and creative AI tools have the highest adoption by a wide margin — well ahead of automation or the more advanced “agentic” AI everyone’s talking about. Which is honestly good news if you’re a small team. The biggest, most accessible win right now doesn’t need a developer or a big budget. It needs you to actually sit down and use it for your writing.
The real bottleneck isn’t money. It’s not knowing how.
This was the most useful stat in the whole report, in our opinion: the top barrier organisations report isn’t cost, and it isn’t the tools themselves. It’s skill. And the businesses further ahead didn’t get there by spending more — they got there by practising more. Peer conversations, hands-on workshops, actually trying things and getting it wrong a few times. Not just reading think-pieces about AI (like this one, we admit).
So if you take one thing from this section: block out half an hour this week, pick one real task in your business, and just try it. Don’t research it more. Do it.
Being found by Google isn’t the whole game anymore
Marketers surveyed expect one of the biggest shifts of 2026 to be the move from traditional SEO toward being visible in AI search — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews, and whatever comes after them. That’s a genuinely new skill, separate from ranking on a results page the old way.
Worth trying this week: ask an AI assistant to recommend a business like yours, in your city, in your category. See if you show up. Most business owners haven’t checked. Most won’t like what they find.
Budgets are growing right where AI maturity already is
One more thing worth noting — the businesses that are more advanced with AI aren’t cutting their marketing budgets to pay for it. They’re increasing both together. AI is being treated as a growth lever in the businesses doing this well, not a cost-saving shortcut. Worth remembering next time you’re planning next quarter’s spend.
Why we’re paying attention to this at Womenlines
The line that stuck with us most from this report is the shift toward AI discoverability as a real, measurable thing — not just a buzzword thrown into pitch decks. Being cited and published on high-authority platforms is starting to matter for a different reason than it used to. It’s not just about ranking on Google anymore. It’s about whether an AI assistant recommends your business at all when someone asks.
That’s a big part of why our Brand Visibility 360° features are built around real publishing and PR distribution, not just social posts — because in 2026, being seen by people and being recognised by the systems recommending businesses to people are becoming two different things, and you need both.
Before next week
A few things worth doing before you close this newsletter, not after:
- Pick one recurring task and actually commit AI to doing it every time, not occasionally
- Give yourself 30 real minutes with a tool this week — not more reading about it
- Ask an AI assistant to recommend a business like yours and see what comes back
- Take a look at your next quarter’s marketing budget and ask whether AI has a real line item
- Pick one piece of content and ask whether it’s written for AI-search visibility, or just for Google
Author
Charu Mehrotra
Founder Womenlines
This article reflects the author’s interpretation of publicly available industry research and is intended for educational purposes. For complete findings and methodology, please refer to the original report published by MMA and Decision Lab.
Also read: Why Trust Is Becoming the New SEO
Follow Womenlines on Social Media
