Boston, MA - A two-speed market is emerging for AI Agents that address MarTech use cases, with incumbent stack vendors releasing simple, bot-like workflow agents that only activate within their own platforms, while more valuable, cross-platform agents require complex, enterprise software development, according to evaluation research released today by MarTech advisory and consulting firm, Real Story Group (RSG).

RSG's Agent AI for MarTech research evaluates seventeen vendors who promise autonomous or semi-autonomous agents for marketing and customer engagement. RSG employs its scenario-driven framework that consists of nine common MarTech use cases in order to test real fit, moving beyond vendor claims to give enterprises a grounded view of what these systems can (and cannot) do today.

The Agent AI Marketplace divides into four categories; building orchestration agents requires a development platform.  Source: RSG

RSG found that the degree of “agenticity” — roughly how autonomous and self-learning it is — remains relatively low across the industry.  “Vendors are over-stating autonomy,” notes RSG research and advisory vice president Apoorv Durga, who adds, “Most MarTech agents today remain reactive bots and nothing more.”

To deploy more robust agents that can deliver more value by orchestrating across vendor environments remains an exercise in software development, often with crude, if accessible, tooling. “Multi-step, multi-system agents remain experimental across large enterprises,” adds RSG principal Scott Simmons. “Early adopters need to manually apply guardrails, security, fail-over, scalability testing, and other services and controls for a production-ready solution.”