The buying decision now settles before the first click or call, and the vendors that issued releases on November 2, 2026 are selling either a view into that earlier stage or controls over the software agents operating inside it. 6sense’s 2026 Global B2B Buyer Experience Report, released on November 2, 2026 and based on 4,611 recent B2B buyers across North America, APAC, Continental Europe, and the UK and Ireland, found that the vendor a buying group favored before first contact won the deal 82% of the time. Alongside 6sense, SEON, Zip Co Limited (ASX: ZIP), Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), Yext (NYSE: YEXT), Sequel, Smartly, Liferay, Profound, Kevel, Bilt, Cyara, Sunrate, Finalytics.ai, Arc XP, Optimizely, T-Mobile US (NASDAQ: TMUS), and SalesFuel issued releases on the same day.
The 6sense report describes a B2B buyer who spends 60% of an average 10.3-month cycle in selection before contacting any seller, and who arrives with a shortlist that already names the winner 92% of the time. A vendor missing from that first shortlist wins less than 10% of the time. The same 6sense report found that 81% of buyers used an LLM somewhere in their evaluation, down from 94% in the prior year’s edition, while only 26% used an LLM to discover vendors. Marketing leaders who read those two numbers together get a narrower assignment than the AI visibility vendors describe: the LLM is a research tool buyers reach for once they already have names, and the names come from websites (36%), prior knowledge (34%), and internal discussion (32%).
Liferay and Profound are selling into the gap anyway. Liferay opened a beta of its SEO & AEO Studio on November 2, 2026, which scans a site for AI crawler access, missing summaries, and hedging language, applies fixes in bulk, and routes every change through existing workflow approval. Profound named Singapore its Asia Pacific headquarters on November 2, 2026 and reported, from its own analysis of 1.8 million anonymized ChatGPT and Gemini conversations, that the share involving product research or purchase grew 23% between January and September 2026. Both releases describe Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) as a standing operations function with a budget line, and Liferay’s approval gate is the detail that matters for a CMO: the tool proposes, a person publishes. Profound’s conversation figures come from its own data and carry no published methodology, so you should treat the 23% as a vendor estimate.
SEON’s November 2, 2026 survey of 2,026 U.S. adults supplies the consumer side of the same shift. SEON found that 68% of U.S. adults use an AI agent at least weekly, that 50% are uncomfortable letting an agent use their credit card for a purchase they asked for, and that 65% of respondents with an opinion would hold the AI company responsible if an agent committed fraud. The merchant drew 11% of the blame. For anyone building Agentic commerce flows, that distribution of blame is the number to carry into the next vendor meeting: the consumer intends to hold the agent platform accountable, and the brand sits downstream of a liability it does not control. Sunrate’s Agentic Card, launched the same day with Mastercard Agent Pay certification and spend rules by merchant category, amount, geography, and validity period, shows the control surface that payment networks are building for agents, and marketing expenditure is one of the named use cases.
Zip’s November 2, 2026 survey of 1,015 U.S. BNPL users, fielded October 17 to 19, 2026, found that 83% of users with a preferred provider would likely abandon a purchase if that provider is missing at checkout, and that 46% did so in the past 12 months. Zip sells BNPL, so the framing serves Zip. The underlying mechanic still holds: the checkout configuration decision now sits with the payments and e-commerce team, and a missing option converts directly to a lost order that 39% of abandoners placed with a competitor.
Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) signed a definitive agreement on November 2, 2026 to acquire Cresta, whose voice agents handle customer calls end to end and whose software coaches human representatives in real time. Salesforce did not disclose a price and expects to close in the first quarter of its fiscal 2028. Cyara launched its Agentic CX Trust Platform the same day, which scores 100% of live human and AI agent conversations for quality and compliance and ships scorecard packs for the EU AI Act, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and GDPR. Read together, the two releases put voice agents and the audit layer for voice agents on the market within hours of each other, and a CMO who co-owns the contact center budget with the COO now has a procurement sequence to decide: the agent first, or the independent scoring first.
Three releases describe agents that act in marketing workflows with a person in the approval path. Sequel made Build, Scale, and Convert webinar agents generally available on November 2, 2026, with a human required to approve any send, invite, event change, or CRM push, and cited the TwentyThree State of Webinars 2026 finding that 39% of marketing teams spend 10 or more hours per webinar. Yext (NYSE: YEXT) closed its acquisition of Flamel.ai on November 2, 2026, which localizes a single paid campaign across hundreds of franchise ad accounts with franchisee opt-in. Smartly launched Intelligence Pro on November 2, 2026, pairing reach forecasting and headroom analysis with INCRMNTAL Connect, which places an Incrementality read next to platform-reported numbers. Sequel’s customer figures, $14 million in attributed pipeline at ElevenLabs and 80% of post-webinar work automated at Unit21, are vendor-reported and unverified, and Smartly’s 5.5x return on ad spend is a boilerplate claim. The workflow change behind all three is the same: the team stops producing drafts and starts reviewing them, and the reviewer’s time becomes the constraint.
Kevel’s November 2, 2026 win at Vend Advertising, the commerce media arm of seven Nordic marketplaces including FINN and Blocket, and Bilt’s $300 million acquisition of the sports loyalty platform LAVA, announced the same day, both expand the inventory a Commerce Media Network (CMN) can sell against logged-in, first-party audiences. Vend disclosed scale only as millions of monthly logged-in users, and Bilt described LAVA’s 56 professional franchises and more than 300 technology adapters without stating how offers will be coordinated across businesses. Finalytics.ai’s intent-based personalization for Travis Credit Union, Arc XP’s expanded Sky News build with a 2027 launch target, T-Mobile’s reorganized creative roster with expanded in-house AI production, and Optimizely’s Murder in Marketing micro-drama round out the day. T-Mobile’s release names accuracy of product information across AI-driven search and assistants as a reason to expand in-house production, which connects the creative operations decision back to the Zero-click search environment that Liferay and Profound are selling tools for.
The strategic question for a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) on November 3, 2026 is sequencing. The 6sense data argues for spending on being known before the cycle starts; the Liferay and Profound releases argue for instrumenting AI answer surfaces now; the SEON data argues for caution before letting agents transact on a customer’s behalf. Each of those claims comes from a party selling the remedy, and the figures that carry the most weight in this edition, 82%, 4,611 buyers, 2,026 adults, 1,015 BNPL users, are the ones with a disclosed sample. Hold the vendor-reported outcomes, the 5.5x, the $14 million, the 23%, to the same standard before they reach a board slide.
What these releases do not prove
6sense, SEON, and Zip disclosed sample sizes, and SEON and Zip disclosed fieldwork dates; 6sense did not state fieldwork dates or the fielding firm, and SalesFuel disclosed neither sample nor dates. Profound’s 23% growth figure rests on its own conversation data with no published method. Sequel’s ElevenLabs and Unit21 outcomes, Smartly’s PwC-validated 5.5x ROAS, and Cyara’s platform counts are vendor-supplied and were not independently verified for this edition. Salesforce and Bilt announced acquisitions; neither disclosed integration timelines beyond Salesforce’s fiscal Q1 2028 close target. Liferay’s product is in beta with no stated customer count, and Finalytics.ai’s Travis Credit Union deployment reports no results yet.
Strategic priorities for marketing leaders
- Audit how your brand reaches a B2B shortlist before any seller contact, using the 6sense finding that the pre-contact favorite wins 82% of the time; weight website, analyst, and peer channels over LLM discovery, which 26% of buyers use.
- Pilot one AEO or GEO monitoring tool, such as Liferay’s SEO & AEO Studio beta, with an explicit approval gate so a person publishes every change the tool proposes.
- Decide who owns agent liability before enabling agentic checkout, using SEON’s finding that 65% of consumers would blame the AI company and 11% the merchant.
- Audit checkout payment options against Zip’s finding that 83% of BNPL users with a preferred provider would abandon without it; treat the vendor framing as directional and confirm against your own cart data.
- Sequence contact center AI procurement: decide whether an independent conversation scoring layer, such as Cyara’s, precedes or follows a voice agent deployment like Salesforce’s planned Cresta integration.
- Reassign reviewer capacity before deploying workflow agents from Sequel, Yext’s Flamel.ai, or Smartly, since each moves the team’s time from drafting to approval.
Press Release Roundup: November 2, 2026
6sense Research Finds That Vendors Need to Be Known and Preferred Before the Buying Journey Begins
6sense released its 2026 Global B2B Buyer Experience Report on November 2, 2026, based on 4,611 recent B2B buyers across North America, APAC, Continental Europe, and the UK and Ireland. The 6sense report found that the vendor a buying group favored before first contact won the deal 82% of the time, that 73% of buying groups held two or more vendor preferences when they formed, and that the eventual winner appeared on that initial list 92% of the time. A vendor absent from the initial shortlist won less than 10% of the time. Buyers spent 60% of an average 10.3-month cycle in selection before contacting a seller, and 96% said they stay current on vendors between purchases, with vendor websites the top source at 36%. On AI, 81% of buyers used an LLM somewhere in evaluation, down from 94% in the prior year’s report, and 26% used LLMs to discover vendors; 21% cited LLMs as a pre-contact influence, compared with 34% for their own knowledge and 32% for internal discussion. The release does not state fieldwork dates or the fielding firm.
Read the full press release (Published: November 2, 2026 | Source: Business Wire)
New SEON Survey Finds U.S. Consumers Are Embracing AI Agents, but 65% Would Blame the AI Company if One Commits Fraud
SEON, the fraud prevention platform, published a survey of 2,026 U.S. adults aged 18 and older on November 2, 2026, fielded October 2 to 6, 2026, weighted on nine demographic variables with a credibility interval of plus or minus 3 points. The SEON survey found that 68% of U.S. adults use an AI agent at least weekly for personal tasks, and that 50% are uncomfortable with an agent using their credit card to complete a purchase they requested (Boomers 65%, Gen X 52%, Gen Z 47%, Millennials 34%). Only 15% would share financial information with an agent, 32% would share nothing, and 65% of respondents with an opinion (n=885) said the company behind the agent bears responsibility if the agent commits a fraudulent transaction, against 14% for themselves, 11% for the merchant, and 10% for the bank or card issuer. Among trust builders, 50% named access to human support, 42% the ability to reverse mistakes, and 39% strong identity verification; 23% said nothing would help. The guardrail questions were asked of a random half of the sample (n=1,016), and the release does not name the research partner.
Read the full press release (Published: November 2, 2026 | Source: GlobeNewswire)
Zip Research Reveals 83% of U.S. BNPL Users With a Preferred Provider Would Likely Abandon a Purchase Without It
Zip Co Limited (ASX: ZIP) released a survey of 1,015 U.S. adults who used any buy now, pay later service in the prior 12 months on November 2, 2026, fielded October 17 to 19, 2026 through the research platform Ideally with a 50/50 gender split. The Zip survey found that 83% of BNPL users with a preferred provider would likely abandon a purchase if that provider is missing at checkout, that 46% did so in the past 12 months, and that 39% of those who abandoned bought the item from a different retailer. Of abandoned carts with a reported value, 75% were $100 or more. The survey also found that 73% of respondents consider BNPL before reaching checkout, 59% chose one retailer over another because of provider availability, and 62% used BNPL for a purchase they would otherwise have postponed or skipped. Zip issued the release in its own commercial interest as a BNPL provider, and the sample covers users of any provider.
Read the full press release (Published: November 2, 2026 | Source: Business Wire)
Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Cresta
Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) announced on November 2, 2026 that it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Cresta, the voice-first customer experience AI platform whose voice agents handle customer calls end to end and whose software coaches human representatives in real time. Salesforce did not disclose a purchase price and expects the deal to close in the first quarter of its fiscal year 2028, subject to regulatory approvals. The announcement names Marriott, Comcast, and Alaska Airlines as Cresta customers and states that Cresta will continue to support the contact center and telephony platforms its customers use after the close. Salesforce positions the combination as linking every voice conversation to the customer record in Service Cloud and to outcomes such as resolution, retention, and revenue. Salesforce published this announcement on its own newsroom; no wire canonical surfaced for November 2.
Read the full press release (Published: November 2, 2026 | Source: Salesforce Newsroom)
Yext Completes Acquisition of Flamel.ai
Yext, Inc. (NYSE: YEXT) completed its acquisition of Flamel.ai on November 2, 2026, adding localized paid media to a channel set that previously covered search, listings, reviews, web, social, email, and SMS. Flamel.ai manages localized paid campaigns for franchise and multi-location brands: a brand configures a campaign once, agents localize it per location, franchisees opt into approved offers and budgets, and the platform supports bulk management across hundreds of ad accounts. Yext pairs the capability with its Scout competitive intelligence product. Yext did not disclose terms.
Read the full press release (Published: November 2, 2026 | Source: Business Wire)
Sequel Launches First-of-Its-Kind AI Agents That Combine Website and Webinar Data to Drive Pipeline
Sequel, the webinar and video platform, announced general availability of Sequel Agents on November 2, 2026. Three starter agents cover the webinar lifecycle: Build plans topics and timing from past results and QA-checks registration pages, emails, and CRM sync; Scale drafts clips, a blog post, speaker LinkedIn posts, and a newsletter blurb; Convert drafts follow-ups for attendees and no-shows, briefs account owners, pushes registrants to the CRM, and produces monthly performance reports. Customers can build custom agents through Sequel’s MCP server, and a human must approve any send, invite, event change, or CRM push. Sequel cites the TwentyThree State of Webinars 2026 finding that 39% of marketing teams spend 10 or more hours per webinar, and reports customer figures from ElevenLabs ($14 million in attributed pipeline in the first half of 2026 against a $300,000 goal) and Unit21 (80% of post-webinar work automated). Both customer figures are vendor-reported and unverified.
Read the full press release (Published: November 2, 2026 | Source: Business Wire)
Smartly Launches Intelligence Pro to Connect Campaign Planning, Performance and Incrementality
Smartly, the AI advertising platform, launched Intelligence Pro on November 2, 2026, a premium tier that combines four capabilities: Reach Planner for pre-launch cross-channel reach and frequency forecasting, Headroom Analysis for identifying where incremental spend grows results and where returns diminish, Benchmarks built from aggregated anonymized performance data across industries, regions, platforms, and objectives, and INCRMNTAL Connect, which places an incrementality view alongside platform-reported performance. Intelligence Pro is available to eligible customers now, and Hearst Newspapers is quoted as a customer. Smartly’s boilerplate cites a PwC-validated 5.5x return on ad spend, 42 minutes saved per hour, more than 800 brands, and more than $7 billion in managed ad spend; those figures are vendor-supplied.
Read the full press release (Published: November 2, 2026 | Source: Business Wire)
Liferay Announces Beta Availability of Liferay SEO & AEO Studio
Liferay, the digital experience platform vendor, released a beta of Liferay SEO & AEO Studio on November 2, 2026, with general availability planned for the first quarter of 2027. The tool scans page metadata, indexing and crawling issues including AI crawler access, and AI search readiness signals such as missing summaries or FAQ sections and hedging language that reduces citation. AI-assisted fixes apply at page, content, and template level, individually or in bulk, and every change routes through Liferay DXP’s existing versioning and workflow approval so a person signs off before publishing. The studio consolidates data from Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, and Liferay Data Platform and includes AI crawler and citation monitoring. Liferay states that more than a thousand companies use its platform and gives no beta customer count.
Read the full press release (Published: November 2, 2026 | Source: GlobeNewswire)
Profound Establishes Singapore as Asia Pacific Headquarters as AI Becomes the New Front Door For Brands
Profound, the AI search visibility and agentic marketing platform, named Singapore its Asia Pacific headquarters on November 2, 2026, with a central business district office opening in the fourth quarter of 2026 and more than 15 hires planned over 12 months. The move follows Profound’s $180 million Series D in September 2026, co-led by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins. Profound’s analysis of 1.8 million anonymized ChatGPT and Gemini conversations from Singapore users found that the share of conversations involving product research, comparison, or purchase grew 23% between January and September 2026, and the release cites Stanford HAI’s 2026 AI Index figure of 61% population AI tool use in Singapore. Profound states that one third of the Fortune 100 and 16% of the Fortune 500 use its platform, naming Estee Lauder, Comcast, Walmart, U.S. Bank, Zoom, Ramp, and MongoDB. The conversation analysis is Profound’s own and its methodology is not published in the release.
Read the full press release (Published: November 2, 2026 | Source: GlobeNewswire)
Vend Advertising Chooses Kevel as Commerce Media Technology Partner
Kevel, the API-first ad serving infrastructure vendor, announced on November 2, 2026 that Vend Advertising, the commerce media arm of the Nordic marketplaces FINN, Blocket, DBA, Bilbasen, Tori, Oikotie, and Bytbil, selected Kevel to power a new Marketplace Media proposition built on logged-in users and first-party intent data. Vend will run on-site and off-site advertising products from a single platform, and Kevel’s server-to-server delivery loads ads in parallel with the page. Kevel states that clients can use its own AI or bring their own data and models, and cites prior work with mobile.de. Scale is stated only as millions of logged-in Nordic users per month, and no financial terms were disclosed.
Read the full press release (Published: November 2, 2026 | Source: GlobeNewswire)
Bilt Acquires Sports Loyalty Technology Leader LAVA in $300 Million Deal, Signaling Major Expansion Beyond Housing
Bilt, the rewards and payments platform, announced on November 2, 2026 that it is acquiring LAVA, a customer engagement and loyalty platform for sports and entertainment, for $300 million. LAVA serves 56 professional franchises across the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and MLS and more than 50 other businesses, with more than 250 integrations and more than 300 technology adapters spanning point of sale, identity, loyalty, ticketing, and payments. Bilt reports more than 7 million members, more than 50,000 merchant partners, and more than 7 million homes in the Bilt Alliance. Bilt plans to combine its AI agents with LAVA’s real-time engagement data to coordinate personalized offers across businesses.
Read the full press release (Published: November 2, 2026 | Source: Business Wire)
Cyara Launches Agentic CX Trust Platform to Provide Independent Proof of Quality and Compliance on Every Live Agent Conversation, Whether Human or AI
Cyara, the customer experience assurance vendor, launched its Agentic CX Trust Platform on November 2, 2026. The core module, AI Trust Observability, scores 100% of live agent interactions, human and AI, for quality and compliance, flags violations in real time, and converts production failures into pre-release tests. Compliance scorecard packs cover the EU AI Act, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and GDPR, and journey monitoring spans more than 420 carriers in more than 145 countries. Cyara states that the platform works with more than 55 AI agent platforms and that Cyara serves more than 450 enterprises and 350 million customer journeys per year. The Business Wire canonical did not surface in search; the link points to a FinancialContent syndication of the Business Wire release.
Read the full press release (Published: November 2, 2026 | Source: Business Wire)
Sunrate Launches Agentic Card to Enable AI-Driven Business Payments
Sunrate, the Hong Kong based B2B payments platform, launched its Agentic Card at Hong Kong FinTech Week on November 2, 2026, a programmable multi-currency virtual commercial card that AI agents can use to pay within preset rules. The card has completed Mastercard Agent Pay certification, and controls cover merchant category, amount, currency, geography, and validity period, with automatic expiry on task completion. Sunrate names marketing expenditure, procurement, business travel, and supplier payments as use cases, including an online travel agency campaign-spend example, and its Sunrate.AI suite includes five agents for payment, FX, compliance, onboarding, and chat. Sunrate serves more than 190 countries and regions and disclosed no pricing or adoption figures.
Read the full press release (Published: November 2, 2026 | Source: PR Newswire)
Finalytics.ai Launches a Personalized Digital Experience for Travis Credit Union
Finalytics.ai, the personalization platform for financial institutions, announced on November 2, 2026 that Travis Credit Union’s website now adapts content, offers, and next steps to inferred visitor intent such as opening a first account, applying for an auto loan, or saving. Finalytics.ai also supplies copy, offers, and reporting, with success measured in accounts opened and loans funded. Travis Credit Union has about 280,000 members, ranks as the 12th largest credit union in California, and holds nearly $6 billion in assets. The experience is live, and the release reports no performance results yet.
Read the full press release (Published: November 2, 2026 | Source: Business Wire)
Sky News expands Arc XP partnership for a next-generation app and website
Arc XP, the digital experience platform owned by The Washington Post, announced on November 2, 2026 that Sky News expanded their partnership to build a new app and website targeted for launch by the end of 2027 as part of Sky News 2030, a five-year video-first transformation. Arc XP will supply its AWS-backed media platform with mobile app, video, and personalization tooling, building on Ask Sky News, an AI conversational search feature already in place. Sky News reports that app video views more than doubled year over year and that it recorded nearly 4.5 billion social video views in 2026 to date, citing IPSOS data from September 2026. Arc XP states that it powers more than 3,000 sites globally.
Read the full press release (Published: November 2, 2026 | Source: PR Newswire)
Optimizely Unveils First-Ever B2B Marketing Comedy in the Form of a Murder Mystery
Optimizely, the digital experience platform vendor, announced Murder in Marketing on November 2, 2026, a B2B marketing dark comedy released as a vertical micro-drama that began October 30 and a feature-length film premiering November 13. Ian Faison of Caspian Studios wrote and created the series with Optimizely’s Julianne DeVincenzo, Dan Reid, and Greg Heinz, and the cast includes Tony Cavalero, Zainab Johnson, Kirk Fox, Flula Borg, and Patrick Renna. Distribution runs on TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube Shorts. The release cites Forrester data that micro-drama viewers are three to four times more likely to watch on short-form platforms than in dedicated apps and that micro-dramas surpassed 6.5 billion YouTube views in the first half of 2026.
Read the full press release (Published: November 2, 2026 | Source: PR Newswire)
T-Mobile Doubles Down on the Power of Brand, Unveiling a Next-Generation Creative Ecosystem
T-Mobile US (NASDAQ: TMUS) announced a reorganized creative ecosystem on November 2, 2026, naming Anomaly as strategic brand transformation partner and Highdive as lead creative advertising agency with responsibility for enterprise-wide, full-funnel creative strategy. T-Mobile’s in-house studio, T-Studios, is expanding AI-enabled creative production to speed content development, scale output, and keep brand and product information accurate across channels including AI-driven search and assistants. T-Mobile disclosed no financial figures. The Business Wire reference number carries a November 1 prefix; the body dateline reads November 2, 2026.
Read the full press release (Published: November 2, 2026 | Source: Business Wire)
Advertising Research: Five Distinct Holiday Shopper Audiences for 2026 (AdMall AudienceSCAN)
SalesFuel released AdMall AudienceSCAN profiles of five holiday shopping occasions on November 2, 2026, aimed at media sales professionals. The SalesFuel profiles state that 22% of U.S. adults shop in store on Black Friday, 25% shop on Cyber Monday, 17% participate in Small Business Saturday, 12% plan to shop on Super Saturday (December 19), and 17% shop on Christmas Eve. Across the five audiences, streaming TV and social advertising register as the top responsive formats, at 48% to 52% depending on the occasion, and 41% of Cyber Monday shoppers respond to search ads. SalesFuel does not disclose sample size or fieldwork dates for AudienceSCAN in the release, so you should treat the figures as directional.
Read the full press release (Published: November 2, 2026 | Source: GlobeNewswire)
Frequently asked questions
What marketing technology and AI announcements were made on November 2, 2026?
On November 2, 2026, 6sense published its 2026 Global B2B Buyer Experience Report, SEON and Zip released consumer surveys on AI agents and buy now, pay later, Salesforce signed an agreement to acquire Cresta, Yext completed its acquisition of Flamel.ai, Bilt agreed to acquire LAVA for $300 million, and Sequel, Smartly, Liferay, Profound, Cyara, Sunrate, and Finalytics.ai launched products. Kevel announced a Vend Advertising win, Arc XP expanded its Sky News partnership, T-Mobile reorganized its creative agencies, Optimizely released a micro-drama series, and SalesFuel published holiday shopper profiles.
What did the 6sense 2026 Global B2B Buyer Experience Report find?
The 6sense report, released November 2, 2026 and based on 4,611 recent B2B buyers across North America, APAC, Continental Europe, and the UK and Ireland, found that the vendor a buying group favored before first contact won 82% of the time. Buyers spent 60% of an average 10.3-month cycle in selection before contacting a seller, and the eventual winner appeared on the initial shortlist 92% of the time. The report found that 81% of buyers used an LLM during evaluation, down from 94% the prior year, and that 26% used an LLM to discover vendors.
What did the SEON survey find about consumer trust in AI agents?
SEON’s survey of 2,026 U.S. adults, fielded October 2 to 6, 2026 and released November 2, 2026, found that 68% use an AI agent at least weekly and that 50% are uncomfortable letting an agent use their credit card for a requested purchase. Among respondents with an opinion, 65% said the company behind the agent is responsible if the agent commits fraud, compared with 11% for the merchant. The survey carries a credibility interval of plus or minus 3 points.
What did Zip’s buy now, pay later survey report?
Zip Co Limited’s survey of 1,015 U.S. adults who used any buy now, pay later service in the prior 12 months, fielded October 17 to 19, 2026 and released November 2, 2026, found that 83% of users with a preferred provider would likely abandon a purchase if that provider is missing at checkout. The survey found that 46% abandoned a purchase for that reason in the past 12 months and that 39% of those bought from a different retailer. Zip is a BNPL provider and issued the research in its own commercial interest.
What is Salesforce acquiring in the Cresta deal announced November 2, 2026?
Salesforce signed a definitive agreement on November 2, 2026 to acquire Cresta, a voice-first customer experience AI platform whose voice agents handle customer calls end to end and whose software coaches human representatives in real time. Salesforce did not disclose a purchase price and expects the deal to close in the first quarter of its fiscal year 2028, subject to regulatory approvals. Salesforce named Marriott, Comcast, and Alaska Airlines as Cresta customers.
What should marketing leaders do with the November 2, 2026 releases?
Marketing leaders can use the 6sense finding that the pre-contact favorite wins 82% of B2B deals to prioritize brand presence before any seller contact, and pilot an AEO or GEO monitoring tool such as Liferay’s SEO & AEO Studio beta with a human approval gate. The SEON finding that 65% of consumers would blame the AI company for agent fraud argues for settling liability terms before enabling agentic checkout. Vendor-reported outcomes from Sequel, Smartly, and Profound were not independently verified and should be treated as claims.
