- Not one marketing leader surveyed said AI is failing to save meaningful time
- 55% say time savings are improving employee wellbeing or reducing workload
- 52% are reinvesting saved time into better content quality and creative output
June 23 2026 – US automotive marketing leaders say artificial intelligence (AI) is not just a cost-cutting tool, with the majority now using saved time to reduce workload pressure, improve content quality and support stretched marketing teams.
The findings come from a nationwide survey of 250 Chief Marketing Officers and Digital Marketing Leads in US auto retail, commissioned by automated video company Phyron. Asked how AI time savings are being reinvested in marketing operations, more than half said it is helping improve employee wellbeing or reduce workload.
The results suggest a positive change in how dealers and auto retail groups are thinking about AI. Rather than using automation only to try and cut costs or increase output, many marketing teams are using it to absorb rising content demands without adding more pressure to staff.
More than half of respondents said AI time savings are being reinvested into improving employee wellbeing or reducing workload (55.2%), while 52.4% said saved time is being used to improve content quality and creative output. Just under half (46.8%) said saved time is being used for team training and capability building.
Only one respondent said they were not actively tracking how AI time savings are being reinvested. None said AI was not saving meaningful time yet.
“It’s common to hear examples of where AI is saving time, but maybe less common to hear where that time is being reinvested ,” says Mattias Kellquist, CEO and co-founder at Phyron. “It’s refreshing to see the time being reinvested in people and their wellbeing.”
“Marketing teams are under pressure to create more content, across more channels, with the same resources. The practical value of AI is that it takes away repetitive production work, gives teams time back and helps them do better work without burning people out.
“This is not about replacing people. It is about removing the manual bottlenecks that stop good marketing teams from doing their best work.”
AI Gives Marketing Teams Breathing Room
Car retailers are under growing pressure to produce more digital content across more channels, from vehicle listings and paid social to video, email and dealer group websites. For marketing teams, that creates a volume problem: every vehicle needs accurate, brand-safe and engaging content, but manual production is slow and hard to scale.
Phyron’s survey suggests AI is starting to relieve that pressure. Rather than replacing marketing teams, the strongest impact is in removing repetitive production work and freeing people to focus on higher-value activity.
Phyron works with over 4,000 dealer customers across 35 countries, helping them save time and money while improving customer engagement. Since January 2021, its customers’ automated videos have generated more than 500 million views.
Phyron commissioned Opinion Matters to survey 250 Chief Marketing Officers and Digital Marketing Leads in auto retail in the US. The research was conducted between April 27 and May 6, 2026.
About Phyron:
Since 2019, Swedish video tech pioneer Phyron has been continually developing the world’s first fully automated AI-enhanced video solution. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI), the software identifies the best and most relevant selling points of each individual car and combines still images from a data feed, facts and figures about the car, brand imagery and retailer services into relevant, highly effective videos.