Marketers are hesitating to bring AI into influencer marketing and connected TV, Modern Retail reports — a notable gap given how aggressively the same marketers have adopted AI tools elsewhere in the ad stack.

The headline finding lands at a moment when AI adoption stories dominate trade coverage. Search, retail media, and creative production have all seen rapid AI rollout. Influencer marketing and CTV, by contrast, remain stubbornly human-driven and manually managed.

Why does the hesitation matter?

Both channels are growth engines. Influencer marketing has become a default line item for consumer brands, and CTV has pulled budget away from linear TV for several years running. Slower AI adoption in these two areas means agencies and brands continue to spend analyst time on tasks that AI already handles in other channels: audience matching, performance forecasting, and creative iteration.

The hesitation is not universal reluctance to AI. The same marketing organizations that experiment with generative creative or automated bidding still keep influencer selection and CTV planning largely in human hands.

What is slowing adoption?

Based on the reporting, the pattern points to a familiar set of friction points that AI vendors have not yet solved in these specific channels:

• Relationship-driven work. Influencer marketing depends on negotiation, trust, and brand fit between people. Automation tools struggle to replicate that judgment.
• Fragmented CTV data. Connected TV inventory spans many platforms with inconsistent measurement, which makes AI-driven optimization harder to trust than in search or social.
• Verification risk. Marketers want proof that AI-selected influencers or AI-placed CTV buys perform before they shift budget.

What should buyers watch next?

For brands and agencies weighing AI in these channels, the practical takeaway from the coverage is straightforward: the tools exist, but confidence does not. Vendors pitching AI for influencer discovery or CTV planning should expect procurement teams to demand case studies, measurement methodology, and exit clauses.

The gap also represents an opening. Whichever platforms can demonstrate reliable, auditable performance in influencer and CTV workflows stand to capture budget that has so far stayed on the sidelines.

For now, marketers appear willing to wait — and to keep humans in the loop on the two channels where relationships and measurement remain hardest to automate.