Nearly Half of Marketers Use AI Agents Without Confidence in Their Data Quality

Validity's 2026 survey of 500 B2B and B2C marketing professionals reveals a widening gap between AI reliance and data confidence: nearly 91% of marketers recognize data readiness as critical to AI adoption, but only 21% consider their CRM data very well prepared for the tools they use. Meanwhile, 45% already employ agentic AI that can act without human review, and two-thirds have increased autonomous decision-making over the past year. The risk is material—only 26% report more than three-quarters of their CRM data as accurate and complete, 62% believe poor data has cost them revenue, and 62% of respondents have acted on AI recommendations they later suspected were wrong due to underlying data problems. The survey also found weak collaboration between marketing and IT (only 39% of leaders report very good alignment), with no clear data governance ownership at 59% of organizations.