Category: MarTech Futurist

Correction labor, use case sprawl, and Gartner’s shift from features to controls point to one constraint on martech buying in 2026: you can only buy what you can specify. Greg Kihlström on pricing verification work and writing acceptance standards.

ChatGPT ads go live across 31 European markets today with targeting stripped down to the current conversation. Agent identity moves under a Linux Foundation body. OpenAI and Anthropic split on data retention. Other parties now write the conditions that determine what your AI can do, and Q4 planning should…

Forrester’s new AI Disruption Model, Experian’s Identity and Fraud Report, and a B2B search overhaul at Akamai all point the same direction: durable martech budget is moving beneath the application, into data, identity, and trust. A practitioner’s read for CMOs planning 2027.

Gartner finds 93% of audit teams use AI and 38% have a strategy. HBR names leadership drift. MarTech documents buyers paying for platforms that explain outcomes. Greg Kihlström on why explanation became the scarce good in marketing operations.

Gartner reports inference spending passed training spending in 2026. For CMOs, that makes verification a recurring operating cost on someone else’s meter. Here is how to price it and which instruments to own.

Point-of-purchase evidence has a shelf life. PubMatic, Makeable, Google, and METR each pushed AI verification from a buying decision into a continuously running function. What CMOs should own, instrument, and write into contracts.

Gartner, IAB, Cloudflare, and a candid APAC agency panel all landed in the same week on one question: what evidence quality does a number need before a CMO can spend against it. A practitioner’s read on grading AI measurement.

EU AI Act Article 50 transparency obligations took effect August 2. Greg Kihlström on what changes for marketing operations, agency contracts, and brand-configured agents.

New research puts a measurable ceiling on multi-agent coordination: collective accuracy peaks near 16 agents and declines after. Why verification cost, not compute, now governs how far marketing teams can scale agentic execution.

Enterprise marketing reports 70% AI deployment and 85% missed launch dates. New research from Knak, StackAdapt, Algolia, and Progress Software shows AI capacity landed on drafting while approvals, assembly, and coordination still set the calendar.