DoubleVerify’s latest global survey has an uncomfortable finding for an industry betting on AI: adoption is up almost everywhere, but the weekly manual workload has barely moved. Marketers spent an average of 9 hours 58 minutes a week on manual optimizations in 2026, according to the report, “Beyond the Hype: The Real State of AI in Digital Advertising,” sent to marketers on October 29.
The research, run by Sapio Research in February 2026, surveyed 2,020 marketing and advertising decision-makers across 25 countries. The margin of error is 2.2 percentage points at 95% confidence.
The headline gap
Here’s the tension. The same report says 92% of marketers use agentic AI for media planning and buying, 97% expect to use AI this year, and half now use third-party AI bidding solutions, up from 42% in 2025.
Yet the time savings are tiny. The 2025 figure was 10 hours 12 minutes. That means a full year of AI adoption produced 14 minutes of relief — about 2.3% less manual optimization time. In both years, 57% of marketers still logged between 8 and 16 hours a week on manual fixes.
Why the hours are stuck
DoubleVerify is candid about the problem: AI has saved time within individual workflow steps, but the total number of hours hasn’t budged. Social platforms explain much of the drag. Although 88% of marketers advertise on social platforms, only 32% use algorithmic optimization solutions there.
Each platform has its own rules, metrics, optimization levers and reporting, so teams repeat similar manual adjustments across walled gardens. The top multi-platform frustrations include:
- Different optimization levers on each platform: 48%
- Budget reallocation complexity: 41%
- Lack of unified cross-platform reach: 41%
- Duplicative manual work: 37%
Notably, the report has two different answers for AI bidding. In the task chart, 34% plan to use AI for bidding optimization in 2026. In the bidding chart, 50% use third-party AI bidding solutions. The report defines third-party tools as a subset of AI bidding, so readers can’t land on a single figure.
The vendor lens
It’s worth remembering who is publishing. DoubleVerify sells its own bidding software, DV Scibids AI, and the final section of the report is a product description. That doesn’t invalidate the data, but it does mean marketers should treat the narrative as a pitch as much as a benchmark.
The Suntory case study is a reminder to ask for specifics. DoubleVerify says four social and video campaigns saw costs drop and ad awareness improve by up to 30% against a control group. The report doesn’t name the platforms, markets, campaign dates, spend or how awareness was measured.
Put the survey to work
Before stacking another AI layer, run a simple audit. Track whether total weekly manual optimization hours actually fall, not just whether a tool saves time on one step. Choose one primary KPI — marketers in the survey want everything at once, with six KPIs all landing between 41% and 44% — and let the tool optimize against that.
The regional data offers a clue. Latin America and Asia Pacific, which lead in third-party bidding adoption, saw the biggest drops in manual hours: down 27 minutes and 32 minutes respectively. North America, the lowest adopter, was flat. The pattern is suggestive, not causal, but it points where to look.
Source: PPC Land
