The vast majority of AI initiatives will fail
Tough but true: many AI projects fail due to hype, speed, false expectations, consumer skepticism, and tech reality. This is precisely where the greatest learning opportunity for 2026 lies, comments Verena Gründel.
“The vast majority of AI initiatives will fail.”
That’s the prediction for 2026 from Konrad Feldmann, CEO of Quantcast, he held at MMA Smarties Award. Wow. Sounds harsh, but I think he’s right.
Here are my four reasons:
- The industry is still in the experimental stage. Development is progressing so rapidly that the possibilities are expanding almost daily. Just a year ago, we could hardly have imagined the impressive videos that can be generated with AI today. And this change means that projects launched today may already be obsolete the day after tomorrow.
- The hype – some say bubble – means that expectations often far exceed the real possibilities. An example: The CEO has read somewhere that marketing can be automated really well with AI – so he wants to halve the team today and the agency stack anyway. But the technology is still a long way from being able to execute a perfect campaign. Many will come back down to earth next year.
- Marketers and agencies love AI projects. Especially when they sit on panels and boast about the amazing progress they have already made. In doing so, they tend to forget the consumers. Kantar found out that globally, AI-supported ads perform slightly worse in terms of overall impact. In Germany more than half of the consumers admit that they do not trust AI-generated ads. Before the tide turns, many advertisers will learn the hard way.
- Last but not least, most technology projects fundamentally fail. And since AI initiatives are nothing more than tech projects, they will suffer a similar fate.
The good news is that it’s neither bad nor detrimental to progress that all these AI initiatives will fail. Because we will learn so much from the countless failed projects. We will gain such valuable insights that by the end of 2026, we will be many times smarter than we are now. And isn’t that a valuable outcome? I think it’s great!
Here’s to a new year in which we become much smarter than we are today.
I’m signing off for the Christmas holidays in a few days and, if you’re celebrating, I wish you a wonderful holiday, a relaxing time, and a good start to an instructive new year!
Yours, Verena
