CES, Davos, and the messaging in the Super Bowl ads this year made it clear: AI is no longer a capability story. It is an operating model story.
These are 10 trends I see converging now, drawn from hundreds of conversations with CMOs and their teams, product and tech leaders.
1. Work identity will break before org charts do
AI is eroding the middle layers of marketing faster than most leaders admit. The damage will not show up as mass layoffs immediately, but as role confusion, eroding confidence, and quiet disengagement among product marketers, strategists, creatives, media planners, and analysts.
You can see the tension in how brands are talking about “AI-first” work while still rewarding old signals of seniority such as headcount managed, decks shipped, or meetings attended. When an AI agent can draft a launch narrative, pressure test positioning, and spin 10 campaign variants before lunch, the question is not “will people be replaced?” but “what does human expertise mean now?”
2. Artificial Intelligence is no longer abstract, but planning still is
In conversations at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year, the undertone was less awe and more urgency. AI capability is compounding, regardless of disagreements among technologists about the timeline to artificial general intelligence.
Yet, marketing organizations are still planning as if change is incremental, a tooling upgrade, another martech stack update, or a set of training. Meanwhile, AI systems are already outperforming humans on speed, scale, creativity, and synthesis in many domains. Many people are overestimating how much time they have left to adapt.
3. Brands will inherit ethical risk without asking for it
As AI interfaces feel more human, marketing becomes the first point of ethical exposure. Legal frameworks will lag, but brand accountability will not.
The clearest way to see this is to watch what happens when monetization collides with trust inside a conversational interface.
OpenAI’s February 2026 rollout of ads in ChatGPT marks a pivotal shift in the AI trust contract, forcing people to distinguish between organic and sponsored AI recommendations.
Marketing will be the function held accountable when customers ask what is organic, what is paid, and whether AI is serving their interests or just the brand’s.
4. Most companies will stall in the middle of AI maturity
This year, marketers and their organizations will rush to declare “Mission Accomplished.”
Tools will multiply, yet workflows, incentive structures, decision rights, and true productivity will remain unchanged.
