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All panelists were practitioners working in or closely with marketing teams, and some also brought their perspective as academic researchers, marketing educators, and graduate marketing students. Panelists came from organizations such as Google, Densu, Ogilvy, Uber, NYU, and UNC Health. A full list of panelists with their affiliations is available in the downloadable report. Short and engaging videos remain central to TikTok marketing trends. Content that entertains, educates, or stands out visually captures attention and encourages viewers to share. Interactive features such as polls, questions, and challenges motivate audiences to engage directly with content rather than passively scroll.
However, we believe they are likely well-positioned to create new levers for organisational growth amid such uncertainty. This culminated in four trends that could help marketers elevate their contributions to brand Derribar Ventures Limited success, and guide CMOs as they set 2023 priorities. Build resilience and growth with strategic audience and market insights, digital strategy, and content strategy that connect brand and local performance. As traditional media struggles to reach younger audiences, influencers are stepping up to fill the void. Nearly two-thirds of consumers say they discover new products weekly or even daily through influencer recommendations.
Tools like HubSpot’s Content Remix make repurposing a walk in the park by turning long-form assets into multiple formats in minutes.
We wrote up what that looks like after 200+ hours with an AI marketing assistant. “Vibe coding” now pulls 84,000 searches a month, up from effectively nothing, and the chart traces a near-vertical climb through early 2025. In our study of 75,000 brands, branded web mentions across the web showed the strongest correlation (0.664) with AI Overview visibility, stronger than backlinks or domain rating. Get talked about in the right places, and AI is far more likely to talk about you.
Your Best Customers Get Even Better
It’s an exceptional tool for identifying when a brief market pullback has reached an oversold extreme or, conversely, when an aggressive surge is starting to run out of underlying gas. When I look for short-term tactical turning points, this is the very first internal indicator I consult. The growing emphasis on data privacy is reshaping how marketers approach consumer information. With legislation like the General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act influencing global practices, brands must prioritize transparency and ethical data use.
Focusing On Younger Customers
Social media platforms continue to roll out features for businesses, but consumers are demanding more authenticity and personalization from businesses. One digital marketing strategy that combines a few of the trends already on this list is the use of chatbots. When asked about which media portrays the most diversity in advertising, 43% of consumers said network TV. Right now, incorporating visual search into marketing strategies is an emerging marketing trend.
“People who are experts in something are inherently more trustworthy than a generic Google AI Overview or basic interpretation by ChatGPT,” explains Paul Mortimer, Head of Marketing at Avidly. In 2024, all three formats were reported as having some of the highest ROIs. When you buy from Ben & Jerry’s, you know exactly what your dollars are going to on a greater level — and many consumers actually choose them because of that. Well, I’d guess at least half of your team is in this threatened category.
- From geopolitical conflicts and economic instability to the ongoing threats related to climate change, CMOs are facing no shortage of external challenges.
- You can use GenAI tools like ChatGPT or Google Gemini to generate content ideas, build briefs and outlines, draft content, or even write complete pieces.
- Retailers are already exploring AR for virtual try-ons, and the next wave could include fully interactive virtual storefronts.
- The parent term “agentic AI” now pulls 101,000 searches a month, “agentic AI tools” is up 309% year over year, and “AI agents for marketing” is up 145%.
- While there are multiple ways to personalize digital marketing efforts, only 10% of businesses use any personalization strategies beyond that.
Devices like smart speakers and AI voice assistants are becoming integral to daily life for many people, influencing how they discover and interact with brands. Organic traffic will continue to decline as LLMs surface your content without users clicking through, making new KPIs essential. Get exclusive insights into digital media’s top-trending topics delivered directly to your inbox. While 2025 ushered in numerous obstacles for marketers, the industry showcased its resilience. Global advertising revenue exceeded initial projections from firms like WPP Media, and the momentum is expected to continue in 2026.
And we’re starting to see nationwide brands to add TikTok to their marketing mix. However, this year, marketers prefer to work with both micro- and macro-influencers. In contrast, over the past two years, micro- and nano-influencers accounted for most collaborations. A single well-articulated explanation on Reddit or a trusted community thread can influence how often — and how accurately — a brand appears in AI-generated answers.
Consistently creating short, interactive videos helps your brand maintain a recognizable presence and encourages users to return for more content. Immersive technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality could significantly impact engagement in 2025. These tools allow consumers to experience products and services in lifelike environments, bridging the gap between digital and physical spaces. As someone who’s worked with AI-driven marketing tools for years, I’ve seen firsthand how powerful they can be—when used correctly. The biggest challenge isn’t just implementing AI; it’s doing so in a way that doesn’t make your brand feel robotic or impersonal.
Another study found that brands with the highest diversity scores have an 83% higher consumer preference. The fashion retailer launched a limited-time-only Gucci Gardens in Roblox, a metaverse version of the brand’s real-life Gucci Garden Archetypes in Italy. In simple terms, the metaverse was dubbed to be a game changer for consumers.
Rather than running a single survey and averaging the results, the AMA brought together more than 30 marketing professionals and trained them in strategic foresight methodology. The American Marketing Association’s 2026 Future Trends in Marketing report identifies the five key forces reshaping the marketing landscape over the next five to ten years. Developed through a modified Delphi process with input from over 30 marketing professionals, the report offers evidence-based guidance on how marketers and brands can adapt to each trend.
No new platform or technology is impacting the marketing space in 2025 more than generative AI. Use real-time topic data to create content that resonates and brings results. It’ll make a landing page in a blog post, short clips, social posts, ad copy, newsletter, and images with a few prompts. And just like that, you have multiple assets for multiple channels to reinforce how people and LLMs understand your brand.
While enterprise leaders increasingly recognize that marketing can be a powerful driver of growth, many still insist that CMOs do more with less. This reflects a disconnect between how marketing budgets are set and what enterprise leaders expect. In fact, at least 61% of marketing budgets are based on enterprise-level revenues and budgets, or prior spend. This leaves marketers with limited control over budget inputs—even when they can deliver measurable outputs such as marketing return on investment (MROI).
Product features, service details, guides, experiences and content will need to be widely findable. Marketers will need to understand the role that empathy and emotion can play in agentic transactions.Brands that accelerate their AI visibility strategy in 2026 will be better placed to drive growth. With AI-powered enhancements to popular search engines, Gartner predicts that brands will see a 50 percent decrease in organic search traffic to their websites by 2028 2. Despite the shifting landscape, a survey by Conductor found that 91 percent of respondents reported that SEO adoption had a positive impact on their website performance and marketing initiatives in 2024 7. As personalization scales, brand values are emerging as an important differentiator.
This resurgence also reflects changing audience expectations. People increasingly want to understand what a brand stands for, not just what it sells. Staying informed allows your business to remain relevant, connect with your audience, and reach potential customers efficiently. Applying the right TikTok tactics while experimenting with new content formats helps your brand stand out in a fast-moving digital landscape. From geopolitical conflicts and economic instability to the ongoing threats related to climate change, CMOs are facing no shortage of external challenges.
To optimize your marketing plan for the modern consumer, it can be important to incorporate some trendier elements into your marketing strategy alongside the more tried-and-true efforts. WhatsApp, a platform that boasts 2 million global users, is one of the most popular ways in which businesses deploy chatbots to achieve their marketing goals. Most consumers especially see digital marketing efforts as lacking diversity. Now, digital marketers are revamping their data collection strategies and aiming to gain back consumer trust.
The throughline is that we engage sincerely and we don’t try to market through it, because overt marketing is the one thing that will get you absolutely crushed on Reddit. In 2025, marketers need to get more niche with their influencer marketing. Lastly, Will Williamson, Director at JDR Group says we shouldn’t take our short-form videos too seriously. If this is how your buyers spend time discovering products and brands, you’ve got to meet them there.
Search is now fragmented across Google, Maps, TikTok, AI engines, YouTube, and retail platforms. Build content tailored to each path to ensure brand presence throughout the customer journey. Dynamic formats like short videos, animations, quizzes, and interactive demos capture attention and increase dwell time across social and web.
In-depth industry research and comprehensive analysis reports. Either way, the downstream effect on how teams work is hard to dispute. But when every team has access to the same AI, the tools stop being the advantage. The difference comes from the skill of the people using them, the ones who know which questions to ask, what good output looks like, and when the machine is confidently wrong.
TikTok relies on trends and challenges to drive visibility, making participation an effective strategy. Using trending hashtags, popular sounds, and viral challenges exposes content to viewers beyond an existing follower base. Adapting trends to fit a brand message keeps content authentic while maintaining a strong appeal with target audiences.
Monitor Brand Reputation Across External Sources
To stay competitive in 2025, marketers need a clear understanding of emerging trends and actionable strategies to adapt. Search demand for “generative engine optimization” went from basically nothing to 12,000 searches a month, up 161% year over year. “AI visibility” is up 258%, “AI search optimization” up 152%, “AI overview optimization” up 625%. They’re companies falling over themselves to get cited and mentioned in AI answers, because that is where a growing share of their audience now starts. So here are the marketing trends I’ve seen firsthand, and that our data confirms, that are changing how marketing roles actually function in 2026. With a shift to brand-led strategies and younger audiences, the emergence of influencer marketing makes sense, but any old influencer won’t cut it anymore.
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