The Future of Marketing: 5 Trends and Predictions for 2026

AI is transforming every element of marketing — from customer journeys to organizational structures, from influencer credibility to device‑driven brand interactions. 

Five marketing predictions from Gartner experts guide CMOs in preparing for the disruptions created by agentic AI, the surge in authenticity-driven content ecosystems, and the rapid evolution of ambient intelligence and consumer trust shaping the future marketing landscape.

Prediction No. 1: Brands will adopt agentic AI to deliver one‑to‑one customer interactions

The impact:
AI agents will take over many routine customer engagements — from notifications to reorders to personalized guidance — shifting marketing from channel‑based execution to fluid, autonomous, agent‑driven journeys. This will collapse traditional martech architectures and move marketers into roles focused on supervising intelligent systems rather than running discrete campaigns.

Prediction No. 2: Influencer budgets will shift toward creator and content authenticity

The impact:
With AI-generated media accelerating and social-originated content increasingly dominating search results, brands will focus heavily on verifying creator identities and ensuring content authenticity. Deepfake risks and rising misinformation will push authenticity to the center of influencer strategy, making validated, trustworthy creator content more valuable than high-volume engagement.

Prediction No. 3: CMOs will move toward fully composable, AI-dependent marketing organizations

The impact:
As AI automates more execution work, marketing organizations will flatten and reorganize around modular, flexible structures. Human–AI hybrid roles will emerge, team boundaries will blur, and individual contributors will operate more autonomously. Skills like digital dexterity, strategic thinking, and cross-functional problem solving will become core to how marketing teams create value.

Prediction No. 4: Ambient smart devices will become a major channel for brand experiences

The impact:
A growing ecosystem of AI-enabled wearables, sensors, and connected devices will shift brand engagement from explicit searches to ambient, context-driven interactions. Voice and visual interfaces will power real‑time, passive discovery moments, enabling deeper personalization while creating new challenges around data privacy, continuous tracking and consumer consent.

Prediction No. 5: GenAI shopping tools will generate less than 10% of e‑commerce revenue

The impact:
Despite industry optimism, consumer-facing shopping agents will see limited adoption due to low trust and fears of biased recommendations. Even AI‑enthusiastic consumers hesitate to let digital agents make autonomous purchase decisions. As a result, GenAI tools will support early‑stage discovery and research more than actual transactions, keeping revenue contribution relatively small.