2026 will see a move toward an agent-to-agent economy where autonomous systems assist in negotiating value. And, while customers remain human, their purchasing decisions will increasingly be guided, filtered, or executed by a digital proxy. To stay competitive, marketing will require a strategic restructure.
“We stand at the threshold of the ‘Agentic Turn’, a shift as significant as the dawn of the Internet. Unlike previous eras that digitised business to serve human needs, this phase asks us to bridge human intent with machine execution,” says Jacques van Niekerk, Group CEO, Incubeta.
South African-born global marketing agency, Incubeta, has published its 2026 Marketing Outlook, identifying six trends driven by AI advancements. The playbook, titled "Tomorrow's World," analyses major shifts in consumer behaviour, measurement, and technology infrastructure that impact marketers in 2026 and beyond.
Trend 1 – AI is collapsing the consumer journey
AI-driven discovery is compressing the traditional multi-step consumer journey into faster decision flows, with consumers expecting immediate, tailored answers across platforms. However, Incubeta doesn’t see this as a total collapse of the funnel or a replacement for search. The company points out that the shift is early and incremental, with Google still processing nearly 16.4 billion daily searches, while ChatGPT handles a fraction of that volume.
That said, specialists at the group say CMOs need to prepare by strengthening experience quality across every channel, ensuring clean and structured data, reinforcing authority signals that AI systems trust, and tightening conversion paths across search, ads, and emerging AI-driven surfaces.
Trend 2 – Measuring what matters
Most brands are still chasing perfect attribution in a world where signals move faster than current systems can interpret. Meanwhile, AI-driven business intelligence will rewrite the entire philosophy of marketing measurement, establishing a new standard that moves beyond tracking clicks and channels to understanding true incremental impact and business outcomes.
Incubeta specialists say the future of measurement isn’t tracking users. Rather, success will be found in modelling outcomes with a combination of advanced methodologies like Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM) to draw a straight line from investment to bottom-line growth.
Trend 3 – Intelligent creative as a differentiator
Nearly 49% of advertisers are already increasing their use of AI to evaluate and optimise creative content. Incubeta specialists warn that the challenge is no longer about creative production capacity to keep up with media requirements, but rather about breaking through a sea of infinite noise. They advise that brands shouldn’t use AI to simply make more creative, but rather to start using it for more intelligent creative, using AI to build agile, data-driven creative systems that evolve in real time and drive measurable outcomes.
Trend 4 – Prompts over clicks
Consumers are continuing to move to more instant, AI-powered prompt interactions, where they get direct answers and solutions without needing to click through to websites. Company specialists believe success in the prompt economy will come from understanding how AI interprets intent. Successful brands will stay agile and user-focused, creating content that delivers real value and is clear, trustworthy, and instantly interpretable by LLMs, ensuring their brand becomes the answer.
Trend 5 – Rise of AI-driven shopping agents
In 2026, AI-powered shopping agents will increasingly become the gateway to commerce. These agents will act as personal shoppers, filtering options, comparing prices, and finalising transactions in seconds. This means the customer experience won’t always be human-to-brand but will increasingly be brand-agent to consumer-agent. Success will depend on whether a brand’s data, product information, and content are structured to be understood, ranked, and recommended by intelligent systems. The company encourages investing in structured product data and AI-ready content, cautioning that preparing data is now a revenue imperative.
Trend 6 – Build systems that own the future
In the year ahead Incubeta says static roadmaps will yield to agentic marketing systems that adapt in real time to rapid changes in privacy, AI, and platforms. The company recommends brands assess AI maturity across their organisation (from siloed tools to unified infrastructure like shared knowledge bases) and align the C-suite on scalable outputs. This builds proprietary moats, enabling resilience through custom agents and interoperable workflows.
“Marketing can no longer be managed solely as a variable operating expense for quarterly efficiency. In a landscape where digital discoverability relies on deep integration, marketing must be restructured as a capital asset, an investment in proprietary data architecture and brand equity that compounds in value over time,” advises Van Niekerk, adding: “The future belongs to those who integrate efficiency with empathy - viewing growth not as a cost to manage, but as an asset to nurture.”
CMOs and marketing professionals can access the full playbook for further insights as well as recommendations on how to plan for the coming Agentic Turn.
