The report systematically describes the development environment, current status, competitive landscape, benchmark cases, and future trends of China's AI-powered intelligent marketing industry.
Article author and source: iiMedia Research
Report Introduction
On May 8, 2026, under the guidance of the Guangdong Provincial Administration for Market Regulation, the "10th China Brand Day Series Activities – AI Empowering High-Quality Brand Development" themed event, hosted by the Guangdong Advertising Association, was held in Guangdong. With "AI Empowering High-Quality Brand Development" as its core theme, the event brought together association directors and vice presidents, brand representatives, AI marketing technology providers, investors, media and traffic ecosystem leaders, and other industry professionals to explore the key role of AI marketing in innovative and high-quality brand development. It also aimed to build an efficient platform for collaboration between brands, technology providers, investors, and media, promoting the deep integration of the advertising industry and brand building.
At this event, Dr. Zhang Yi, CEO and Chief Analyst of iiMedia Research, was invited to attend and release the "2026 China AI Intelligent Marketing Development White Paper" as a keynote speaker . The report systematically reviews the current application status, technological iteration path, and future development trends of AI marketing across the entire brand building chain. It deeply analyzes how AI technology, through user insights, content generation, scenario adaptation, and effect optimization, reconstructs the underlying logic of brand marketing, providing clear guidance for enterprises to transform from "digital operation" to "intelligent growth." This will help Guangdong brands seize new opportunities in AI marketing, build differentiated competitive advantages, inject new momentum into the high-quality development of brand building and the advertising industry in the province, and propel more local brands onto the national and even international stage.
From the internet boom to the AI era, over the past two decades of continuous disruptive innovation in digital technology, iiMedia Research has witnessed the profound restructuring of the marketing ecosystem and gained insights into the rapid expansion of the new consumption landscape and the fundamental transformation of brand growth logic. iiMedia Research data shows that 53.0% of users use search engines for shopping searches, primarily to check product prices and promotions, view user reviews and professional evaluations, find official or authorized purchase links, and learn about product information. Meanwhile, nearly 40% of users have adopted AI-powered big data model tools as an important option for information retrieval. Currently, AI technology permeates the entire marketing lifecycle, from forward-looking user insights and strategy formulation to mid-stage content creation and multi-channel distribution, and finally to back-end refined user operations and long-term value mining, constructing a complete intelligent marketing closed loop.
01 Analysis of the Development Environment of China's AI-Powered Intelligent Marketing Industry
Definition of AI-powered intelligent marketing
AI-powered intelligent marketing leverages next-generation artificial intelligence technologies such as large-scale models and AIGC (AI Generative Database) to deeply integrate into the entire marketing business chain. It intelligently reconstructs and automatically optimizes the entire process of traditional marketing insights, creativity, placement, operation, conversion, and post-marketing review, enabling a modern, new-type business marketing system with personalized and precise operations. Unlike traditional digital marketing, which only digitizes marketing processes and provides basic data statistics, AI-powered intelligent marketing upgrades artificial intelligence to become the intelligent decision-making center for the entire marketing chain, helping businesses reduce costs, improve efficiency, and increase revenue and value in marketing.
A Review of the Development Stages of AI-Powered Marketing
Technological iteration and industry ecosystem transformation are driving AI-powered marketing to leap from a tool-assisted approach to a paradigm shift. Technological breakthroughs, platform changes, and the evolution of industry rules at different stages have collectively shaped the underlying logic of the marketing industry, propelling brand operations from one-way push notifications and precise matching to end-to-end intelligentization, ultimately giving rise to a new marketing ecosystem adapted to the AI era.
Macro Trends: Global AI Market Expands, Intelligent Agent Sector Explodes
The global artificial intelligence industry has entered a stage of large-scale development, with the overall market size steadily expanding, laying the foundation for the application and commercialization of AI technology. As the next-generation core of interaction, AI intelligent agents are experiencing explosive growth, becoming a key force driving the autonomous and personalized operation of the entire AI marketing chain, and the industry's long-term growth is highly certain.
Market size data is typically updated annually; if updated, iiMedia Data Center will release the information immediately.
Technical Foundation: Large-Scale Model as the Foundation, Continuous Upgrades in Computing Power
China's underlying AI technologies are rapidly improving, with large-scale models and intelligent computing power forming a synergistic development pattern. Data from iiMedia Research shows that the Chinese large-scale model market reached 49.54 billion yuan in 2025. While the market continues to expand, the pace of technological iteration is accelerating, becoming the core algorithmic support for intelligent applications. During the same period, China's intelligent computing power reached 616.6 EFLOPS, showing a steady upward trend. The supply capacity of high-end computing power continues to strengthen, effectively guaranteeing the entire process of large-scale model training, efficient computation, and commercialization, jointly building the core technology system for intelligent marketing.
Market size data is typically updated annually; if updated, iiMedia Data Center will release the information immediately.
Implementation Support: Solid Infrastructure, Comprehensive Content Empowerment
A robust digital infrastructure and efficient content production are the core guarantees for the large-scale adoption of intelligent marketing. Data from iiMedia Research shows that from 2018 to 2025, China's cloud computing industry will continue to grow, serving as a core digital infrastructure and providing solid computing power support for large-scale model training, efficient computation, and commercialization. At the same time, the core market size of AIGC in China is experiencing rapid growth, with new content production technologies being rapidly implemented, comprehensively empowering the entire process of marketing content creation and distribution. Working in synergy with cloud computing, this constructs a dual support system of infrastructure and content production for the high-quality development of the intelligent marketing industry.
Market size data is typically updated annually; if updated, iiMedia Data Center will release the information immediately.
Six Core Features of AI-Powered Intelligent Marketing
AI marketing drives rapid expansion of the GEO industry market.
Driven by both competition for existing market share and evolving consumer trends, AI-powered intelligent marketing is experiencing rapid growth. Among these, GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), a new service model connecting users and brands, is seeing explosive market expansion. Data from iiMedia Research shows that the Chinese GEO industry market size reached 34.93 billion yuan in 2025 and is projected to exceed 600 billion yuan by 2030. As AI-driven dialogue platforms increasingly replace traditional search, GEO services based on large-scale models will become a key tool for enterprises to optimize their marketing channels and reduce customer acquisition costs, continuously releasing the market's growth potential.
Market size data is typically updated annually; if updated, iiMedia Data Center will release the information immediately.
02 Current Status of China's AI-Powered Marketing Industry
AI-powered intelligent marketing industry chain panorama
China's AI-powered intelligent marketing is leaping towards "full-chain closed-loop operation".
Currently, AI-powered marketing in China is undergoing a critical leap from "single-point tool efficiency improvement" to "full-link closed-loop operation," with core scenarios covering AI content creation, user insights, intelligent ad placement, private domain operations, intelligent customer service, and digital human marketing. The industry exhibits clear stage differentiation, with most companies still in the "tool stage," where AI applications are concentrated in single-point aspects such as content generation and customer service assistance. Leading companies, on the other hand, are taking the lead in moving towards the "process stage" and "intelligent entity stage," fully integrating AI into the entire marketing chain, from user insights and content production to channel placement, lead distribution, sales follow-up, and post-marketing optimization.
Three major structural dilemmas in traditional marketing
Traditional marketing currently faces three major structural dilemmas, becoming core obstacles to brand growth. First, the era of easy traffic growth is fading, traffic acquisition costs are rising, and marketing ROI is continuously declining, trapping brands in a cost dilemma due to the dual pressure of customer acquisition costs and growth pressures. Second, while marketing channels and methods are becoming increasingly diversified, content homogenization is prominent, and user reach efficiency is insufficient, making it difficult to achieve deep engagement and effective conversion, leading to operational difficulties. Third, although companies have accumulated massive amounts of marketing data, they lack efficient analysis and application capabilities, preventing data from being transformed into decision-making guidance, resulting in a data-driven decision-making dilemma. These three problems are intertwined, jointly restricting the improvement of brand marketing effectiveness and sustainable growth.
AI large-scale models have become a mainstream choice for information retrieval channels.
User information retrieval channels are becoming increasingly diversified. Short video platforms, content sharing platforms, and traditional search engines remain the mainstream entry points, while AI-powered large-scale model tools, such as ChatGPT, have become the information retrieval choice for nearly 40% of users. iiMedia Research analysts believe that users' acceptance of AI-driven information acquisition methods has significantly increased. The characteristics of intelligent interaction and precise response are reshaping users' information retrieval habits and creating broader application space for AI-powered intelligent marketing in multi-channel reach, scenario-based content adaptation, and demand mining.
Chinese users show a high level of acceptance for AI-powered new search engines.
Against the backdrop of AI-powered intelligent marketing development, users have shown a high level of acceptance for new AI-driven search engines. Compared to traditional search engines, their advantages in answer accuracy, content quality, interactive experience, and understanding of complex questions have been recognized by over half of users. The precise and efficient information matching characteristics of new AI highly align with the user reach and needs analysis logic of intelligent marketing. Over 80% of users are willing to try new AI-driven search engines, and this large user base provides favorable market conditions for AI-driven intelligent marketing to leverage intelligent search scenarios to achieve traffic acquisition, user insights, and precise targeting.
Competitive Landscape of China's AI-Powered Marketing Market
The current competitive landscape of China's AI-powered intelligent marketing market has evolved into a multi-entity structure characterized by clear division of labor and complementary collaboration. From the perspective of service provider business type, it mainly includes four categories: internet platform-based marketing service providers, comprehensive professional marketing service providers, vertical AI search marketing service providers, and small and medium-sized innovative service providers. Each type of entity, leveraging its differentiated capabilities, plays an irreplaceable role in the industry chain, collectively forming a complete industrial ecosystem.
03 Case Studies of Benchmark Cases in China's AI-Powered Intelligent Marketing Industry
GEO Generative Engine Optimization Track Leader: Smart Push Era (Technological Advantages)
GEO Generative Engine Optimization Track Leader: Intelligent Push Era (Model Innovation)
GEO Generative Engine Optimization Track Leader: Smart Push Era (Implementation Results)
04 Current Challenges and Future Development Trends of China's AI-Powered Intelligent Marketing Industry
Existing Challenges (I): Bottlenecks in the Implementation of Technology Effectiveness and a Crisis of Compliance and Trust
Existing Challenges (Part Two): Lagging Industry Ecosystem Standards and the Growing Pains of Enterprise Transformation
Future Development Trends (Part 1): The Construction of Technological Foundations and the Rise of New Marketing Paradigms
Future Development Trends (Part Two): Upgrading to Intelligent Closed-Loop Operation and Forming a Standardized Ecosystem
