A year ago, ChatGPT was the default AI tool in marketing. Two surveys published in the past four weeks suggest that is no longer true: Claude has almost drawn level, and in one of them it is ahead.

Basis: Claude up from 17.9% to 72.3%

Basis, a Chicago company that makes advertising software, released the fourth edition of its AI and the Future of Marketing report on October 19. It surveyed 184 marketing and advertising professionals at agencies, brands and publishers in August 2026.

The biggest change is in tools. Anthropic's Claude is used by 72.3% of respondents, up from 17.9% in 2025, the sharpest one-year gain of any platform, according to Basis. ChatGPT is still slightly ahead at 74.5%, but down from 88.6%. The two shares add up to almost 147%, so nearly half of respondents must be using both. Basis's release gives no figures for Gemini, Copilot or other assistants.

Other findings:

61.4% use generative or agentic AI in their work every day, up from 33.6% a year ago; 98.4% use it at all.
88.6% of organisations pay for premium AI tools, up from 65.7% last year and 44.0% in 2024.
51.1% of organisations deploy AI agents, most often for reporting and analytics (72.3%), campaign briefs (56.4%) and content creation (45.7%).
The most common uses are research (85.9%) and ideation (83.2%).
76.6% say AI-generated content still falls short of their organisation's human-created work.

The weak point is measurement. Only 6.5% of marketing organisations measure the return on their AI spending against defined benchmarks, and 65.1% either don't measure it or don't know whether anyone does.

Ahrefs: Claude in first place

Ahrefs, which sells SEO software, published its second annual survey of marketers on September 30. Of 301 respondents, 280 (93%) use AI to create or help create content. Among them, Claude is used by 83.2%, ChatGPT by 75.7% and Gemini by 57.9%. Two more Anthropic products follow: Claude Cowork (42%) and Claude Code (37%).

The report's author, Glen Allsopp, links the shift towards Claude to skill files, reusable instructions that Claude introduced almost a year ago: 68% of AI users in the survey use them, and 55% write their own. He also acknowledges that he may be seeing a marketing bubble. Two-thirds of respondents (66%) trust AI content only after a human has reviewed it.

How to read these numbers

Both samples are small: 184 people in one, 280 AI users in the other. Neither company says how respondents were recruited or publishes a margin of error. The audiences also differ: Basis asked advertising and media professionals about their work in general, Ahrefs asked about content creation. And both are vendors with an interest in the topic: Basis sells an advertising platform with AI features, and Ahrefs promotes its own AI marketing platform on the same page as the survey.

Ahrefs also warns against comparing tool figures with last year: its 2025 survey asked respondents to pick one tool, while this year's allowed several.

Still, two separate surveys point the same way. A year ago, Claude was a niche choice in marketing. Now marketers use it about as often as ChatGPT, and many use both.

What this means if you're choosing AI tools for marketing

Test both main assistants on your own tasks. ChatGPT and Claude are now neck and neck, and many marketers use both. Try them on research, briefs and drafts with your real material; our ChatGPT vs Claude comparison covers the differences. If your team works in Google Workspace, Gemini, third in the Ahrefs survey, is worth a look too.

Add specialised tools where a general assistant isn't enough. Jasper is built around brand-consistent marketing content and campaigns. Surfer SEO and Semrush cover search optimisation and track how brands appear in AI answers. Copy.ai builds AI workflows for sales and marketing teams.

Decide how you will measure results before you buy. Nearly nine in ten organisations in the Basis survey pay for AI tools, but almost none measures the return against a benchmark. Pick one or two metrics, such as time per brief or cost per article, and record them before and after.

Keep a human in the loop. Three-quarters of Basis respondents say AI content still falls short of human work, and in the Ahrefs survey 56% say human-written content is better than their AI content.