This year, I got some help with my predictions. This is part of a 3-part series that blends my own thoughts about the year ahead with those of leading experts across Marketing, AI, Customer Experience, and more. Let’s take a look at what the experts are saying.
Is the era of unfettered corporate experimentation with AI finally reaching its end?
While consumers demand authenticity and emotion in 2026, the engine room of the enterprise is undergoing a ruthless architectural overhaul. The old Silicon Valley mandate to “move fast and break things” is being replaced by an urgent need for disciplined integration, modular infrastructure, and the complete demolition of operational silos.
The Great Unification: The Death of Silos
For decades, marketing and sales organizations have been fractured by distinct budgets and conflicting goals. By 2026, these barriers will dissolve into unified “growth systems.” Chris Todd, Principal of Marketing Operations at CTM, argues that the industry must finally abandon “bottom-up KPIs” created by silos and specialization. Instead, growth will come from operating as “one orchestrated system that shares insights, takes coordinated actions, and learns together in real-time”.
This unification extends to the most fundamental definitions of marketing. Erika Rollins predicts that brand and demand will merge into a “single, AI-powered growth system,” where brand-building is embedded directly into the conversion journey. Similarly, in the retail sector, David Simon of Mood Media forecasts that trade and retail media will stop competing for budgets and instead build a “shared growth engine”.
Prediction: The Rise of the T-Shaped Marketer in a Visual-First Landscape
Emma Robinson, Canva’s B2B Marketing Lead, asserts that enterprise creative workflows in 2026 will be fundamentally visual-first and AI-augmented, but human-led. She predicts that successful enterprises will move beyond experimentation to systematized AI integration that actually delivers measurable value.
“Traditional roles won’t disappear,” says Robinson, “but they’ll evolve into T-shaped positions, combining creativity with data fluency, strategic storytelling with AI literacy, and broad marketing knowledge with deep expertise in areas like marketing technology and measurement.” She expects teams to restructure around AI enablement, with new roles focused on AI governance, brand training for AI systems, and orchestrating the blend of human creativity and machine efficiency.
Robinson concludes that the biggest shift will be in how time is allocated: AI will give marketers back significant hours (citing that 85% of companies are seeing 4+ hours per week already), allowing teams to focus on high-value strategic and creative work rather than production busywork. “Companies that don’t make this shift and continue to use AI just for speed rather than to elevate human creativity will struggle to compete,” she warns.
The New Architecture: Modular, Hybrid, and “AIphemeral”
To support this unification, the technical infrastructure of the enterprise must change. The monolithic, all-in-one platforms of the past are being rejected in favor of “modular, plug-and-play architecture” that allows for greater agility. Rohan Gupta of R Systems notes that multi-cloud and hybrid environments will transition from being a strategic choice to becoming “architectural necessities”.
This infrastructure will power a radically new type of digital experience. Ben Rothman of Rightpoint predicts the rise of the “AIphemeral” web—experiences that are not static websites, but real-time webs “created by AI, unique to every moment, and gone when its purpose is done”. Consequently, Lora Kratchounova suggests that websites will morph to look increasingly like “ChatGPT interfaces” rather than traditional directories.
This shift also changes how data is valued. Deepak Singh of Adeptia emphasizes that AI’s true leverage point isn’t the model itself, but the “First-Mile Data” flowing into it. To access this, enterprises will pause expensive legacy migrations and instead wrap legacy platforms with “APIs and AI-ready connectors” to unlock data without rebuilding the stack.
The Rise of AEO and the “AI User”
As the web changes, so does the method of discovery. Rob Garf of Cordial declares that “Agent Engine Optimization” (AEO) is the new battleground, replacing traditional SEO. In this environment, the goal is no longer ranking on Google, but ensuring brand content is “surfaced and used by AI answers”.
Furthermore, the “user” interacting with enterprise software is changing. Deepak Singh predicts that AI agents will become the new “enterprise user,” capable of configuring and monitoring automations with “minimal human involvement”. This moves organizations toward a “set it and forget it” model, where CI/CD pipelines become “self-governing systems” that dynamically adjust based on real-time data.
Governance as the Ultimate Efficiency
With autonomous agents and self-governing systems running the show, the role of human oversight shifts to governance. Unni Kurup of Theorem notes that companies are moving from experimental energy to disciplined growth, where “governance will become just as important as efficiency.”
Trust becomes the glue holding this architecture together. Stefanie Beach warns that “trust and transparency will become non-negotiable brand differentiators”. This is reinforced by Regina Ye, who states that the future of monetization lies strictly in the “clean, transparent use of first-party data”. In 2026, operational reliability will be driven by AI-driven insights that “detect anomalies, predict incidents, and remediate issues” before they ever impact the user.
What leaders should do
To transition from current legacy structures to the agile, agent-driven operating system of 2026, marketing and technical leaders must execute a deliberate architectural pivot. Based on the expert predictions, here are three critical actions to take immediately.
Force the Convergence of Planning and Metrics
The era of competing budgets is over. Leaders must forcibly integrate planning processes across trade, retail media, brand, and demand teams. David Simon, EVP of Advertising for Mood Media, advises that “the most effective brands and retailers are connecting their planning processes, measuring performance holistically, and building a shared growth engine instead of competing budgets”.
- The Move: Abandon isolated metrics. As Chris Todd, Principal of Marketing Operations at CTM, warns, “the problem today is that silos and specialization have created bottom-up KPIs”. Instead, adoption of a unified strategy is essential, because “growth will come from operating as one orchestrated system that shares insights, takes coordinated actions, and learns together in real-time,” according to Gabe Rogol, CEO of Demandbase.
Swap “Bloated” Monoliths for Modular Connectivity
Stop buying all-in-one suites that promise to do everything but excel at nothing. The architecture of 2026 is composable. Regina Ye, CEO of Topsort, predicts that retailers will move “away from bloated all-in-one systems toward modular, plug-and-play architecture”.
- The Move: Shift focus from collecting new data to connecting existing data. Unni Kurup, Director of Client Consulting & Strategy at Theorem, notes that the future strategy will be “less on collecting data and more about connecting what they already have”. This is critical because, as Deepak Singh, Chief Innovation Officer of Adeptia, states: “Enterprises will realize that AI’s real leverage point isn’t the model—it’s the First-Mile Data flowing into it”.
Elevate Governance from Compliance to Competitive Advantage
In an autonomous world, safety is a product feature. Leaders must implement “Governed AI” protocols immediately. Unni Kurup of Theorem emphasizes that in this new landscape, “governance will become just as important as efficiency”.
- The Move: Make trust visible to the customer. Stefanie Beach, CEO of The Marketeer Group, asserts that “trust and transparency will become non-negotiable brand differentiators”. Internally, this means investing in platform engineering that can “hide infrastructure complexity while enforcing security, compliance, and cost controls automatically,” as Rohan Gupta, VP at R Systems, recommends.
Earned Trust Is Infinitely More Valuable Than Paid Reach
Invest in Earned Trust and Community Cultivation. The rise of AI-generated content makes human validation “exponentially more valuable.”
- The Move: Emma Robinson, Canva’s B2B Marketing Lead, says that leaders must design their marketing strategy around earned trust rather than paid reach by investing in community-led experiences and empowering customer advocates. Human validation, peer recommendations, and authentic creator partnerships will be the currency that cuts through the AI noise.
Summary
The structural theme defining 2026 is unmistakable: integration. This isn’t just about combining elements; it’s about fundamentally re-engineering the enterprise to function as a cohesive, self-correcting whole. Organizations have spent years building specialized, often isolated, systems and teams, creating internal friction and slowing market response. The shift for 2026 demands the dissolution of these silos in favor of unified frameworks that drive efficiency and intelligence. This imperative for integration manifests across several critical domains.
Merging Brand and Demand
The artificial separation between brand-building and direct-response marketing is collapsing. Successful organizations will treat them not as sequential or separate budgets, but as two sides of the same continuous customer journey coin. Brand experience must inform and enhance immediate demand capture, while demand signals must continuously refine and vitalize the brand narrative. This requires unified data platforms and cross-functional teams that share common KPIs, moving beyond “awareness” and “conversion” as distinct goals and seeing them as an integrated pipeline.
Connecting Trade and Retail Media
The explosion of retail media networks (RMNs) has created a significant opportunity and a potential new silo. Organizations must integrate their traditional trade marketing strategies (focused on in-store and distributor relationships) with the growing power of digital RMNs. This integration ensures that promotional spend is optimized end-to-end, leveraging first-party retailer data to target consumers at the point of purchase, whether physical or digital. This holistic view is essential for maximizing ROI and achieving true omnichannel consistency.
Wrapping Legacy Data for Modern AI
The promise of AI remains constrained by inaccessible, fragmented legacy data stores. The integration challenge here is not simply migration, but creating robust, intelligent “wrappers” or API layers around existing systems. This allows modern AI and machine learning models to access, interpret, and leverage decades of operational and customer data without the prohibitive cost and risk of wholesale replacement. This layer of abstraction is the key to unlocking true enterprise-scale AI, transforming historical data from a liability into a strategic asset.
The organizations that will thrive are those that abandon the practice of building disparate, unconnected parts. The future belongs to the engineers of the system, those who recognize that competitive advantage lies in the seamless, intelligent, and immediate flow of data and action across the entire enterprise. It is a transition from a collection of specialized machines to a single, highly integrated, self-optimizing organism.
