2026 marketing predictions

I’m back for my annual marketing predictions.

This year flew by, and we all know what the big advancement has been. It rhymes with hi. It loves to use “–” whenever possible. And the gold rush around it? Very much alive in San Francisco.

AI.

It’s been massive for marketing teams. I’ve seen headcount cut by as much as half purely because of efficiency gains.

Now that nearly every marketing org is running AI in its daily workflows, the real question is: what happens next?

Here’s how I see the ripple effects in 2026.

1/ Copywriting and brand become the #1 startup moat

I’m proof of this. I just spent ~$20,000 revamping the copy and brand for GrowthPair.

We’re quickly converging into a sea of sameness. Every startup is using AI to write their copy, build their site, and automate creative. Because of this, the only real differentiation left is how a brand makes people feel.

Watch for companies to reallocate spend from performance media to copy, voice, and brand design; the human layer AI can’t replace.

2/ Paid media buyers evolve into paid creative strategists

I’m already seeing this shift in the calls I take weekly.

Startups are hiring fewer media buyers and more creative-minded marketers. As ad platforms like Meta continue to automate campaign setup, creative direction becomes the new lever.

The best-performing teams will be the ones that can merge performance data with storytelling instincts.

3/ Marketers become part-engineers (thanks to Lovable, Replit, etc.)

It wasn’t long ago that WordPress made it easy for marketers to tweak copy or run A/B tests.

Now, the frontier is way beyond that. Marketers are beginning to build lead magnets, landing pages, video ads, and even MVP product features, without ever writing code.

We’ll see fewer “requests in Asana for engineering” and more “first builds from marketing.” The marketers who can prototype are going to move twice as fast as their peers.

4/ Influencers license their AI avatars for ad creative

This one’s equal parts exciting and terrifying.

With tools like HeyGen and Synthesia improving daily, it’s easy to imagine creators scanning their face once and licensing their avatar to brands.

They’ll get paid while they sleep and audiences won’t always know what’s real versus synthetic.

We’ll soon have a new ethical and creative frontier to deal with around how identity gets used in advertising.

5/ LLMs like GPT launch pilots for ad placement

It took Google about two years to launch AdWords after its search engine went live in 1998.

ChatGPT launched in November 2022. By that simple math, it’s due.

In September, OpenAI posted a role for a “Growth Paid Marketing Platform Engineer,” which is a clear signal of where things are headed.

I’m calling it now: we’ll see the first experiments with LLM-driven ad placements in 2026. This could become one of the biggest new ad ecosystems since Google and Meta.

6/ Offshore hiring for marketing accelerates (hi, GrowthPair)

Fifteen months after launching GrowthPair and taking hundreds of discovery calls, I’ve noticed a major shift.

I’m spending less time educating founders about offshore hiring and more time answering, “When can we start?”

As AI continues to multiply output expectations, companies will look to global talent to keep up without burning cash. The smartest teams are already going global, and it’s giving them a huge edge.

7/ Marketing teams shrink ~30% through AI leverage

My old growth team at Postmates had around 30 people. With today’s tools, we could’ve done the same work with eight.

That sounds wild, but I’ve seen it firsthand. With the right AI systems and the right people, you can cut headcount dramatically without losing output.

Lean, AI-augmented marketing teams will become the norm, not the exception.

Honorable mentions

- ChatGPT remains the most-used AI tool for marketers
- The AEO playbook stays unwritten, but small hacks emerge
- Last-click attribution fades as holistic models take over
- Employee and founder-led marketing keeps rising
- Websites get rebuilt for agentic browsers

2026 will be a transformative year in marketing that defines the next decade.

The tools are evolving fast, but the fundamentals are still the same: tell great stories, build a strong brand, and move faster than the market.

Keep an eye on leaders like Kieran Flanagan and Greg Isenberg who are tracking these shifts closely.