Overview
MarketingOps 3.0: Building a Hybrid Operating Model for Growth in a Machine-Mediated Market is a 2026 book by Greg Kihlström, published by De Gruyter Brill with a foreword by Paul Roetzer of SmarterX and the Marketing AI Institute, that sets out an operating model for marketing when customers, competitors, and brands all act through AI agents. It is written for CMOs, Marketing Operations and RevOps leaders, and transformation teams that have bought AI tooling and now need an organizational design to go with it. The book introduces Commercial Operations Orchestration (CO2) as a shared operating layer across marketing, sales, service, and product, and Return on Agent (ROA) as the economic measure for work split between people and agents. It is also referred to as Marketing Operations 3.0.
See also: Commercial Operations Orchestration (CO2) · Marketing Operations · Business-to-Agent-to-Consumer (B2A2C) · Agentic Commerce
Publication details
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Full title | MarketingOps 3.0: Building a Hybrid Operating Model for Growth in a Machine-Mediated Market |
| Author | Greg Kihlström |
| Foreword | Paul Roetzer, founder, SmarterX and Marketing AI Institute |
| Series | De Gruyter Brill marketing titles (Kihlström’s sixth with the publisher) |
| Publisher | De Gruyter Brill |
| Publication date | October 5, 2026 |
| Edition | First |
| Formats | Paperback, ebook (PDF/EPUB via publisher; Kindle; Kobo) |
| ISBN | 978-3-11-221883-9 (ebook, per publisher DOI and press release); 978-3-11-914343-1 (paperback, per retailer listing) — see editorial notes |
| Length | 239 pages (paperback) |
| Where to buy | De Gruyter Brill, Agile Brand Guide product page, Amazon, Indigo, Kobo |
Summary
The book opens from a single premise: personal AI assistants are increasingly the first party to evaluate a brand’s offer, which makes machines the first audience for a growing share of commercial interactions. Kihlström treats that as an operating-model problem rather than a channel problem. If an agent acting for a customer can’t read your product data, reconcile your pricing logic, or complete a transaction without a human workaround, no amount of campaign spend fixes it.
From there the book traces Marketing Operations through two earlier stages. MarketingOps 1.0 was the systems-and-process function that kept marketing automation running. MarketingOps 2.0 added data, measurement, and cross-functional process ownership. Both, in the book’s telling, reached their limits once AI agents started acting on both sides of the transaction. The 3.0 model is a hybrid: humans and AI agents with defined roles and decision rights, operating against shared context and a shared source of truth instead of departmental handoffs.
The organizing framework is Commercial Operations Orchestration (CO2). CO2 is the layer that coordinates marketing, sales, service, and product as one commercial system. The book describes a CO2 Council, its structure, and its operating cadence, and spends several chapters on governance, including agent governance, machine readability of commercial data, and the ethics of agent-mediated interactions. A second framework, Return on Agent (ROA), gives finance and operations leaders a way to measure hybrid work, and the related concept of the Human Premium names the value that stays with people when agents handle the rest.
Later chapters cover talent design (the hybrid workforce, the human-agent squad, and a Bot Manager role), the shift in customer experience from omnichannel to omni-agent interaction, from campaigns to next-best-action, and from transactional measurement to lifetime value, and an execution roadmap. The book closes with a one-page operating model plus toolkits and templates. It can be read front to back or by role. Kihlström’s own framing of the risk is blunt: organizations won’t fail this transition for lack of ideas, but because they confuse activity with progress, tools with strategy, and pilots with operating models.
Key concepts and frameworks
All of the following originate with Kihlström in this book unless noted.
Commercial Operations Orchestration (CO2). A shared operating layer across marketing, sales, service, and product, replacing handoffs with shared context, shared truth, and explicit decision rights. See the Martechipedia entry on CO2.
CO2 Council. The governing body for CO2, with a defined membership and operating cadence.
Return on Agent (ROA). An economic measure for work performed by a mix of humans and AI agents.
Human Premium. The value that remains distinctly human in a hybrid operating model, and that the model is designed to protect and price.
Bot Manager. A proposed role responsible for the performance, governance, and lifecycle of AI agents inside the commercial system.
Hybrid workforce and human-agent squad. Team structures in which people and agents hold defined roles side by side.
Business-to-Agent-to-Consumer (B2A2C). The market structure in which an AI agent sits between the brand and the customer. Documented in Martechipedia at B2A2C.
MarketingOps 1.0 / 2.0 / 3.0. The book’s three-stage history of the Marketing Operations function.
Who it’s for
A CMO who has approved three AI pilots and can’t say which one changed how the team works. A Marketing Operations or RevOps director asked to “own AI” without a mandate over sales or service data. A transformation lead whose agentic-commerce roadmap stalls at the point where product data, pricing, and governance belong to four different owners. The book assumes familiarity with marketing automation, CRM, and basic data architecture, and does not explain those from scratch.
Readers who want the foundations of the Marketing Operations function itself (team design, process, platform management) are better served by Kihlström’s Marketing Operations: Strategy, Implementation and Optimization (De Gruyter Brill, 2026), which this book builds on.
Edition history
| Edition | Year | Publisher | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| MarketingOps 3.0: Building a Hybrid Operating Model for Growth in a Machine-Mediated Market | 2026 | De Gruyter Brill | First edition. |
Related predecessor titles, not editions of this book:
| Title | Year | Publisher | Relationship |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Agile Brand Guide: Marketing Operations | 2023 | The Agile Brand | Short guide; out of print. Covers the 2.0-era function. |
| Marketing Operations: Strategy, Implementation and Optimization | 2026 | De Gruyter Brill | Full-length treatment of the function; MarketingOps 3.0 extends it to the agent-mediated market. |
How this book compares
| Title | Author | Year | Focus | Best suited for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MarketingOps 3.0 | Greg Kihlström | 2026 | Hybrid human-agent operating model; CO2; ROA | Leaders redesigning MarketingOps for agentic commerce |
| Marketing Operations: Strategy, Implementation and Optimization | Greg Kihlström | 2026 | Building and running the MarketingOps function | MarketingOps leaders establishing the function |
| Using AI in Marketing: An Introduction | Greg Kihlström | 2024 | AI use cases and adoption for marketers | Teams earlier in AI adoption |
| Marketing Technology Platforms | Greg Kihlström | 2025 | Evaluating and implementing the martech stack | Stack owners and platform evaluators |
| Hacking Marketing | Scott Brinker | 2016 | Software-management ideas applied to marketing | Marketing ops leaders adopting Agile practices |
| The Revenue Operations Manual | Laura Adint and Sean Lane | 2024 | RevOps function design | RevOps leaders aligning sales, marketing, and CS |
FAQs
What does “machine-mediated market” mean in the title? A market in which AI agents act for customers (screening options, comparing offers, completing purchases) and for brands, so that many commercial interactions happen agent-to-agent before a human is involved.
What is Commercial Operations Orchestration (CO2)? The book’s central framework: a shared operating layer that coordinates marketing, sales, service, and product as one commercial system, with shared data and explicit decision rights instead of departmental handoffs.
What is Return on Agent (ROA)? A measure for the economic contribution of work performed by AI agents within a hybrid team, intended to replace headcount-based and tool-cost-based ways of evaluating automation.
How is this different from the 2026 Marketing Operations book? Marketing Operations: Strategy, Implementation and Optimization covers how to build and run the function. MarketingOps 3.0 assumes that function exists and redesigns it for an agent-driven market.
Is this a book about AI tools? No. It is about operating model, governance, roles, and measurement. Specific platforms are mentioned as examples, not reviewed.
Who wrote the foreword? Paul Roetzer, founder of SmarterX and the Marketing AI Institute.
Who is the intended reader? CMOs, Marketing Operations and RevOps leaders, Commercial Operations leaders, and digital transformation teams.
What is the CO2 Council? The cross-functional governing body the book proposes to run CO2, with a defined structure and meeting cadence.
Does the book include templates? Yes. It closes with a one-page operating model, toolkits, and templates for implementation.
Related Terms
- Commercial Operations Orchestration (CO2)
- Marketing Operations
- Revenue Operations (RevOps)
- Business-to-Agent-to-Consumer (B2A2C)
- Agentic Commerce
- Agentic AI
- Decision Rights
- Next Best Action
- Return on Agent (ROA)
Related Books
- Marketing Operations: Strategy, Implementation and Optimization (2026)
- Using AI in Marketing: An Introduction (2024)
- Marketing Technology Platforms: Strategy, Evaluation, and Implementation (2025)
- Stop Saying “AI” (2026)
- The Agile Brand Revisited (2025)
Sources
- De Gruyter Brill — MarketingOps 3.0: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783112218839/html
- The Agile Brand Guide — “New Book from Greg Kihlström and Publisher De Gruyter Brill Defines the Operating Model for Marketing in an Agent-Driven Market”: https://www.agilebrandguide.com/new-book-from-greg-kihlstrom-and-publisher-de-gruyter-brill-defines-the-operating-model-for-marketing-in-an-agent-driven-market/
- Capitol Communicator — same release, syndicated: https://capitolcommunicator.com/new-book-from-greg-kihlstrom-and-publisher-de-gruyter-brill-defines-the-operating-model-for-marketing-in-an-agent-driven-market/
- The Agile Brand Guide — MarketingOps 3.0 (product page): https://www.agilebrandguide.com/books/marketingops-3-0/
- Indigo — MarketingOps 3.0 (paperback listing): https://www.indigo.ca/products/marketingops-3-0-building-a-hybrid-operating-model-for-growth-in-a-machine-mediated-market
- Greg Kihlström — All Books: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com/greg-kihlstrom-books-1
- Martechipedia — Commercial Operations Orchestration (CO2): https://www.agilebrandguide.com/wiki/operational/commercial-operations-orchestration-co2/
- Martechipedia — Business-to-Agent-to-Consumer (B2A2C): https://www.agilebrandguide.com/wiki/business-models/business-to-agent-to-consumer-b2a2c/