Back

Australian employers say AI marketing skills are non-negotiable. Their job ads say otherwise.

my2cents.com.au

Key Facts:

• 91% of Australian marketing businesses use AI (BizCover, 2025)

• 75% of Australian leaders wouldn't hire without AI skills (Microsoft/LinkedIn WTI, 2024)

• 3.5% of ~13,000 Australian marketing job ads ask for AI skills (My2Cents, Jan–Apr 2026)

• 84% of university marketing curricula contain no AI content (My2Cents, Mar 2026)

• Bond University (79%) and UQ (61%) are the clear positive outliers

• 1 in 4 Australian employees use AI without telling their manager (AHRI, Dec 2025)

• Only 30% of Australian organisations have a workplace AI policy (KPMG, 2025)

 

91 per cent of Australian marketers use AI. Three in four leaders say they won't hire without it. Just 3.5 per cent of marketing job ads actually ask for it.

 

Sydney, 8 May 2026 — Ninety-one per cent of Australian marketers say they use AI (BizCover, 2025). Three in four Australian business leaders say they wouldn't hire someone without AI skills (Microsoft / LinkedIn Work Trend Index, 2024). Just 3.5 per cent of roughly 13,000 marketing job ads posted on leading Australian job boards over the past four months actually ask for it (My2Cents, April 2026).

A proprietary My2Cents analysis uncovers a major blind spot in hiring: a striking gap between what marketers say they do with AI — and what employers actually ask for.

My2Cents assessed marketing roles against a four-level AI capability framework: Performative → Capable → Adoptive → Transformative. At the lowest level, roles at the Performative level cite AI in the company boilerplate but ask for no AI capability in the job description. At the highest level — Transformative — job ads explicitly require candidates to use AI to reshape how marketing work is done.

 

KEY FINDINGS

 

1. Performative AI is the most common form. Across the 13,000 roles analysed, most AI references appear in the company boilerplate — terms like "AI-powered" or "AI-driven" — rather than in actual role requirements. Common patterns include identical AI language repeated across unrelated roles at the same employer, AI-themed taglines attached to otherwise traditional events and content jobs, and references to job-board matching algorithms as evidence a role is "AI-enabled".
2. The university paradox. Australian universities are hiring for AI capability they largely don't teach. A March 2026 My2Cents analysis of 629 marketing subjects across 32 universities found 84 per cent contain no AI content at all. Yet universities are also among the more AI-explicit employer groups in the job-ad dataset. Bond University (79 per cent of subjects referencing AI) and the University of Queensland (61 per cent) are the clear outliers, while RMIT has recently added two AI-relevant units — AI in Marketing and Enterprise AI and Business Analytics — to its Bachelor of Commerce.
3. Shadow AI is the symptom. Employees are already using AI at work — often without permission, guidance or oversight. Around one in four Australian employees are using AI tools without telling their managers (AHRI / HRM Magazine, December 2025) and one in three upload sensitive data without oversight (Josys, September 2025). Just 30 per cent of Australian organisations have a workplace AI policy at all (KPMG, 2025).
4. AI mentionitis masks the gap. If performative AI is what shows up in the job ad, AI mentionitis is what shows up in meetings — the manager who now prefaces every suggestion with "well, I asked Claude…". In both cases, the claim to AI sophistication runs well ahead of the capability to back it up.

 

Taken together, the findings point to a growing gap between how AI is used and how it's governed. Ninety-one per cent of Australian marketing businesses say they use AI, but only around 30 per cent of Australian organisations have a workplace AI policy (KPMG, 2025). One in four employees are already using AI without telling their manager (AHRI, December 2025).

"The governance bomb is already ticking — it's sitting in someone's personal ChatGPT account, with live client data in the prompt," said Chris Jowsey, co-host of My2Cents and founder of Nugget Digital.

 

The paradox in universities appears to run deeper. They're hiring for AI capability they may not yet consistently teach, while at the same time using AI in increasingly sophisticated ways to recruit and retain students.

"In many cases, the system appears to be moving faster than the skills it's producing," said Denise Rainey, co-host of My2Cents and director of Rainey Day Digital.

 

CORROBORATING DATA

 

ADMA's State of AI in Marketing 2026 (n=1,092) finds 77 per cent of Australian marketers use AI at work at least weekly and 52 per cent daily. Microsoft's 2024 Work Trend Index puts AI use at work at 84 per cent across the Australian knowledge-worker subset.

 

METHODOLOGY

 

BizCover's 91 per cent figure comes from a small-business sample of 92 marketing businesses in their 2025 Australian Small Business AI Report. The 3.5 per cent figure comes from a My2Cents analysis of approximately 13,000 publicly available Australian marketing job ads, across leading Australian job boards between January and April 2026, and filtered for ads that explicitly mention AI by name. The university curriculum data comes from a March 2026 My2Cents analysis of publicly available course information across 32 Australian universities and 629 marketing subjects.

 

The full dataset and the interactive capability assessment launch shortly at jobs.my2cents.com.au.

 

Read the full analysis: https://www.my2cents.com.au/p/the-saydo-gap-in-ai-marketing-hiring

 

SOURCES

 

• BizCover, Australian Small Business AI Report 2025 (marketing-businesses sub-sample, n=92): https://www.bizcover.com.au/blog/how-marketing-businesses-are-adapting-to-ai-in-2025/

• Microsoft / LinkedIn, Work Trend Index Annual Report 2024: https://news.microsoft.com/source/2024/05/08/microsoft-and-linkedin-release-the-2024-work-trend-index-on-the-state-of-ai-at-work/

• ADMA, State of AI in Marketing 2026 (n=1,092): https://adma.com.au/resources/what-1000-marketers-told-adma-about-ai-adoption-and-what-it-means-for-2026

• AHRI / HRM Magazine, 1 in 4 Employees Use AI Without Telling Managers, December 2025: https://www.ahri.com.au/articles/1-in-4-employees-use-ai-without-telling-managers

• QUT / AHRI, State of AI in Australian HR Report, December 2024: https://www.ahri.com.au/wp-content/uploads/AHRI-AI-in-HR-Report.pdf

• Josys / Censuswide, Shadow AI Report 2025, September 2025: https://josys.com/news/shadow-ai-report-australia

• KPMG / University of Melbourne, Trust in AI — Global Insights 2025: https://kpmg.com/au/en/insights/artificial-intelligence-ai/trust-in-ai-global-insights-2025.html

• IBM, Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025: https://www.ibm.com/reports/data-breach

• DEWR, Digital TAFE Centre of Excellence for NSW, 14 April 2026: https://www.dewr.gov.au/newsroom/articles/digital-tafe-centre-excellence-new-south-wales

• My2Cents, Australian marketing job ads analysis (~13,000 ads, Jan–Apr 2026): https://jobs.my2cents.com.au/

• My2Cents, Australian university marketing curriculum analysis (32 universities, 629 subjects, March 2026)

About us:

My2Cents is an Australian marketing podcast and community run by Chris Jowsey (Nugget Digital) and Denise Rainey, where we share real-time, aggregated data plus actionable insights. https://www.my2cents.com.au/

Contact details:

Chris Jowsey

Co-host, My2Cents | Founder & Managing Director, Nugget Digital

Email: [email protected]

Mobile: 0487 789 600

LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/chrisjowsey

Web: https://www.my2cents.com.au/

Denise Rainey

Co-host, My2Cents | Director, Rainey Day Digital

LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/rainey-day-digital