Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo: Day 2 Highlights

We are bringing you news and highlights from Day 2 of the 2026 Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo, taking place this week in London. Below is a collection of the key announcements and insights coming out of the conference. 

On Day 2,  we are highlighting sessions on how to become a Genius digital marketing brand, fighting AI-powered disinformation and how human-centered brands are the new challengers.

• Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey Finds CMOs Allocate 15.3% of Marketing Budgets to AI, But Only 30% Are Ready to Scale AI Capabilities
• Gartner Survey Reveals Marketing Leaders Expect AI Automation of Marketing Work to Double by 2028

By Matt Moorut, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner 

Digital marketing performance is becoming increasingly polarized: the leaders are increasingly cementing their positions while laggards fall further behind. In this Signature Series session at Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo, Matt Moorut, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, shared the findings of Gartner’s yearly analysis of 1,000+ brands across 11 industries. 

• “Every year we benchmark more than 1,000 brands on digital marketing performance, and the top 3% in each industry earn the title ‘Genius.’ Last year, only 33 brands made that cut.”

• “AI is magnifying the divide between leaders and laggards - driving up performance for those who are capable of using it, but making others fail faster.”

• “Across the class of 2025, Genius brands were searched for 12x more than peers on Google, and received 18.7x more site visitors.”

• “While most brands pulled back on hiring marketers in 2025, Genius brands stepped up— targeting new roles to close skill gaps that block AI adoption, not on ‘more hands for more tasks.’”

• “Genius brands hired 2.5x more dedicated marketing technology professionals than non‑Genius brands - and they’re prioritizing software and programming skills to increase digital dexterity.”

   

  Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with Matt Moorut by contacting Jordan Brackenbury at jordan.brackenbury@gartner.com.

By Andrew Frank, Distinguished Vice President Analyst at Gartner

AI is reshaping how customers discover, evaluate and trust brands - often through answer engines that compress a brand’s entire digital footprint into a single “authoritative” response.  That makes misinformation more dangerous: it doesn’t just appear in isolated incidents; it can spread at a global scale.  In his session at Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo, Andrew Frank, Distinguished VP Analyst in the Gartner Marketing Practice, discussed how AI is turning disinformation into a brand risk amplifier.

• “AI is a brand risk amplifier. These systems aren’t simply indexing information - they’re interpreting it and presenting that interpretation as an authoritative response.”

• “Although technology fuels the spread of false information, it also offers powerful tools to combat it. AI agents can play a key role in a coordinated operational response.”

• “Enterprises need TrustOps - an operational approach to managing truth and trust on an ongoing basis. Committing to TrustOps sets organizations up to meet disinformation’s escalating challenge with adaptive measures.”

• “TrustOps scans channels continuously, executes investigations in minutes, and issues human-approved dispatches within hours at most.”

• “CMOs should care because AI increases not just the amount of misinformation, but its reach, and how precisely it’s targeted. You can have a brilliant strategy - and watch it get eclipsed by disinformation.”

   

  Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with Andrew Frank by contacting Jordan Brackenbury at jordan.brackenbury@gartner.com.

   

  Andrew Frank is the co-author of World Without Truth, which is available now exclusively on Amazon.