AI agents are reshaping B2B marketingThe meaning of account-based marketing is evolving into agent-based marketing. The idea reflects a profound change. Enterprise buying groups are no longer made up solely of humans.Marissa DacayArtificial intelligence agents are rapidly becoming part of the enterprise buying processGift this article4 min read3 hours agoFor more than a decade, account-based marketing shaped the way large enterprises pursued growth. B2B marketing teams mapped buying groups inside target companies, tailored campaigns for different executives and invested heavily in data, automation and personalised engagement. The model became the foundation of modern B2B marketing.Now a new force is reshaping today’s B2B marketing playbook.Artificial intelligence agents are rapidly becoming part of the enterprise buying process, influencing how products are discovered, compared and recommended long before a customer visits a corporate website or speaks to a sales team. The shift is prompting marketing leaders to rethink not only their technology stack, but the definition of the audience itself.At the centre of the debate is a new concept gaining traction among global marketers. The old meaning of ABM (Account Based Marketing), is evolving into something different: agent-based marketing.The idea reflects a simple but profound change. Enterprise buying groups are no longer made up solely of humans.AI systems such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot are increasingly acting as the first layer of research and evaluation for corporate buyers. Internal AI agents built by enterprise technology teams are also emerging as decision support tools.The implications for enterprise marketing are significant. Recent data points to the scale of the shift. Bain & Company found that 80 per cent of consumers now rely on AI-written results for at least 40 per cent of their searches, while Adobe Digital Insights reported AI-driven traffic to US websites surged 269 per cent year-on-year in March 2026. The result is a compressed customer journey where buyers arrive with higher intent, fewer alternatives under consideration and stronger pre-existing opinions shaped by AI-generated recommendations.For marketers, visibility is becoming less about ranking in search results and more about being surfaced inside conversational interfaces and AI-generated responses.Marissa Dacay is the global VP of enterprise marketing at AdobeThat is forcing enterprises to reconsider how content is structured, distributed and trusted online.In the emerging AI environment, content must increasingly be machine-readable, context-rich and supported by credible third-party validation.Marketing leaders are beginning to realise that the homepage is no longer the front door to the enterprise.Instead, the first brand interaction may happen inside an AI-generated answer presented without the customer ever clicking through to a website.The consequences extend well beyond search. Inside enterprise marketing departments, AI agents are also changing how work itself is performed. Marketing teams are using generative AI to accelerate content production, create campaign variants, analyse customer behaviour and automate repetitive workflows.Some executives describe this as the rise of the “agentic enterprise”, where AI systems operate not simply as tools, but as collaborators embedded into daily workflows.That evolution is beginning to reshape operating models across large organisations. Instead of marketers spending time manually executing campaigns, their role increasingly shifts towards strategy, governance and orchestration. Human teams define objectives, establish controls and oversee brand standards, while AI systems execute workflows at scale.The challenge for enterprises is that most existing organisational structures were not built for this model.Many companies remain trapped in what executives privately describe as “pilot purgatory” where dozens of AI experiments exist, but few reach production scale. Technology infrastructure may be connected, but data governance, workflow design and organisational alignment often lag behind.As a result, enterprises are now reassessing four critical areas. The first is data and signal intelligence. AI interactions generate richer contextual signals than traditional clicks or web visits, but many of those signals occur on external platforms companies do not own.The second is content strategy. Large language models increasingly prioritise trusted third-party sources over corporate websites, meaning influence now depends heavily on credibility and external reputation.The third is brand itself. In an AI-driven environment, brands are shaped not just by advertising but by what customers, publishers and communities say across the broader digital ecosystem.The fourth is operating model design. Organisations need clearer role definitions between humans and AI systems, along with governance structures capable of managing automated decision-making at scale.For technology providers, this shift is creating a new competitive race.Adobe is among the companies positioning itself around what we call the future of customer experience orchestration. We have also expanded our enterprise offerings across three major areas: brand visibility, content supply chain management and customer engagement.Brand visibility increasingly focuses on ensuring companies appear effectively inside AI-generated recommendations and conversational search environments. Content supply chain technology is aimed at helping enterprises produce larger volumes of personalised material while maintaining consistency and governance. Customer engagement platforms are evolving towards real-time orchestration that continuously adapts to behavioural signals and intent.Adobe’s recently announced CX Enterprise Coworker platform represents another step in that direction. The system is designed to coordinate workflows across Adobe applications, third-party AI platforms and enterprise systems, while keeping humans involved in critical decisions.The broader ambition is clear. Build marketing operating systems for AI-enabled customer engagement.This transition is unfolding against a backdrop of intensifying pressure on chief marketing officers and chief information officers to demonstrate measurable returns on AI investments.Many enterprise leaders now face a dual challenge. They must modernise their organisations for an AI-driven customer environment while also ensuring governance, security and brand trust are maintained.The stakes are high because the economics of discovery are changing rapidly.In the previous generation of digital marketing, companies competed for search rankings and web traffic. In the next phase, they may compete to become the preferred answer generated by an AI system.That creates a fundamentally different competitive environment where trust, authority, structure and machine interpretability become strategic assets.For enterprise marketers, the acronym may still be ABM. But almost everything underneath it is changing.Marissa Dacay is the global VP of enterprise marketing at Adobe.This content was produced in partnership with Adobe. Read our policy on commercial content here.