Basis, a Chicago-based media software company, published the fourth edition of its “AI and the Future of Marketing” report on 19 October 2026. In its release, Basis says Anthropic’s Claude “posted the sharpest one-year gain of any platform, used by 72.3% of marketers today, up from just 17.9% in 2025; ChatGPT usage fell to 74.5% from 88.6%.”
The report “surveyed 184 marketing and advertising professionals across agencies, brands, and publishers,” Basis says. The changes in points below are our arithmetic from Basis’s figures; the Copilot and Gemini figures are as PPC Land read them from the full report.
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The key insight: As we read it, the survey shows marketers using several assistants at once rather than switching from one to another: shares add up to well over 100%, and Claude rose 54.4 points while ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini all kept at least 47.8% of respondents, by Basisโs figures and PPC Landโs reading.
Basis’s report page puts the finding this way: “ChatGPT use fell to 74.5% from 88.6% a year ago, while Anthropic’s Claude climbed to 72.3% from 17.9%—turning a one-horse race into a genuine competition.”
By our arithmetic, Claude rose 54.4 points in a year and ChatGPT fell 14.1 points, leaving a gap of 2.2 points. Also by our arithmetic, the proportion of respondents using Claude is about four times its 2025 level.
PPC Land, which read the full 42-page report, says that in the 2025 wave 45.0% of respondents used Gemini and 41.4% used Microsoft Copilot. In 2026, it says, Copilot was at 55.4% and Gemini at 47.8%. By our arithmetic, that is a gain of 14.0 points for Copilot and 2.8 points for Gemini.
Share of marketing and advertising professionals who use each tool in their work, 2026 against 2025 (dashed line). ChatGPT and Claude figures are from Basis’s release; Copilot and Gemini figures are as PPC Land read them from Basis’s full report. Changes in points are our arithmetic.
Who Was Asked, and When
Basis’s release says the survey ran “in August 2026.” PPC Land says the report itself gives the fieldwork as July 16 to August 14, 2026, and that the earlier waves had 202 respondents in 2023, 141 in 2024 and 140 in 2025.
The question is about use at work: PPC Land reports the finding as the share of professionals who use each tool “in their work.” Respondents can use more than one tool, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
PPC Land notes that “Basis does not publish a margin of error or describe how respondents were recruited,” and that with 184 respondents “each person is worth about 0.54 percentage points.”
Where the Money Goes
Basis says 88.6% of organizations now pay for premium AI tools, “up from 65.7% last year and 44.0% in 2024.” According to PPC Land’s reading of the report, among the 163 organizations that pay, Claude Pro was the most used paid product at 33.1%.
PPC Land lists Microsoft Copilot Premium next at 29.4%, then ChatGPT Pro at 25.2%, Claude Enterprise at 22.1% and ChatGPT Plus at 21.5%. In 2025, it says, ChatGPT Plus was the most used paid product at 38.0%, ChatGPT Pro was at 31.5% and Claude Pro at 15.2%.
PPC Land says Basis groups the tiers by vendor and writes that “premium versions of Claude are now used by nearly two-thirds” of paying organizations, with ChatGPT’s paid tiers at 59.6%. PPC Land adds that these vendor totals are simple sums of tiers, so “the vendor totals are upper bounds rather than counts of organizations.”
The Rest of the Report
Basis says 61.4% of respondents use generative or agentic AI in their work every day, “up from 33.6% a year ago,” and that 98.4% use it at all. It says use of AI agents “surged 155.5% year-over-year, with 51.1% of organizations now deploying them.”
The release also says “Just 6.5% of marketing organizations measure the ROI of their AI investments against defined benchmarks, and 65.1% either do not measure it at all or are unsure whether anyone at their organization is doing so.”
Katie McAdams, Basis’s chief marketing and commercial officer, is quoted: “Marketers have moved well past the question of whether or not AI belongs in their workflow. Yet, more work is needed to justify the investment.”
The Structural Read
As we read it, the paid tiers moved in the same direction as use: by PPC Landโs reading, Claude Pro went from 15.2% to 33.1% of paying organizations while ChatGPT Plus fell from 38.0% to 21.5%.
As we read it, the sample is small and the publisher sells software: with 184 respondents each person moves a result by about 0.54 points, and Basis publishes no margin of error, so the 2.2-point gap is within reach of a few respondents.
As we read it, Basisโs own emphasis is elsewhere: its release leads on daily use and on the 6.5% of organizations that measure AI returns against defined benchmarks, the measurement gap its media software is built to address.
Katie McAdams, chief marketing and commercial officer, Basis, in the 19 October 2026 release
“Marketers have moved well past the question of whether or not AI belongs in their workflow. Yet, more work is needed to justify the investment.”
Three Implications
A TWO-HORSE RACE INSIDE ONE WORKFORCE Basis puts ChatGPT at 74.5% and Claude at 72.3% of surveyed professionals, a gap of 2.2 points by our arithmetic, against 70.7 points a year earlier.
CLAUDE PRO NOW LEADS THE PAID TIERS By PPC Landโs reading, Claude Pro is now the most used paid product, at 33.1% of the 163 organizations that pay.
A SMALL SURVEY FROM AN INTERESTED PARTY The figures come from 184 respondents to a survey run by a media software company that publishes no margin of error.
The framework argues: “Enterprise vendors donโt sell software anymoreโthey sell irreversibility. The product is the interconnection.”
As we read it, Basisโs numbers describe the stage before that: marketers spread their work across several assistants, so no single one has yet become the layer the rest of their stack depends on. The framework was published in December 2025 and does not mention Basis, Claude or ChatGPT.
What Is Not Established
This is one company’s survey of 184 professionals, not a market share measure. PPC Land points out that Basis sells media software and is “not a neutral observer,” and that the report’s conclusion maps onto what Basis sells.
The full report sits behind a download form, and we did not read it; the Copilot, Gemini, fieldwork and paid-tier figures are as PPC Land reports them. Neither Anthropic nor OpenAI is quoted in Basis’s release.
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Basis’s fourth annual survey of 184 marketing and advertising professionals puts Claude at 72.3% use, up from 17.9% in 2025, and ChatGPT at 74.5%, down from 88.6%. By our arithmetic, the gap between the two was 70.7 points a year ago and is 2.2 points now.
A note on sourcing. This piece is built on Basis’s own release and report page of 19 October 2026 and on PPC Land’s reading of the full report, which sits behind a download form and was not read by us. The Copilot, Gemini, fieldwork and paid-tier figures are PPC Land’s reading. Changes in points are our arithmetic. Basis sells media software. Nothing here is a forecast, and nothing here is financial or investment advice.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
