Marketing In 2026 Feels Weird

On the surface, we’ve never had more power. AI tools are everywhere. Content is cheaper than ever. Distribution is “democratised”.

And yet… for many, results are getting worse.

Traffic is leaking. Funnels are collapsing. Customer acquisition costs are creeping up. And a lot of teams are quietly realising their old playbooks just don’t work anymore.

This isn’t a tooling problem. It’s an architecture problem.

Welcome to what I’d call The Great Erosion: a slow but very real breakdown of legacy acquisition models — happening right under most marketers’ noses.

Let’s talk about what’s actually changing, and how the best teams are adapting.

The Big Shift No One Can Ignore

Here’s the stat that should stop you in your tracks:

Nearly 60% of searches now end with zero clicks.

Why? Because AI answers the question directly on the results page. No blog click. No landing page. No retargeting pixel.

That single change quietly destroys the old, linear funnel:

Search → Click → Convert

Instead, we’re moving into information symmetry. Prospects now show up informed, sceptical, and halfway to a decision, sometimes with more context than your sales team.

So what wins in 2026?

Not more tools.
Not more content.
Not more headcount.

What wins is how well you orchestrate intelligence.

The 2026 Landscape (Skimmable, On Purpose)

The teams pulling ahead all share one trait: they’re built for speed, not scale.

Think Human + AI Operators, not bloated departments.

Here are the shifts that actually matter:

1. Search Is Everywhere Now

Google is just one surface.

Discovery now happens across:

• YouTube

• Reddit

• Podcasts

• Slack communities

• LLMs like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude

If you’re only “doing SEO”, you’re invisible in half the buyer journey.

2. B2B Ads On Streaming Platforms Are Still Mispriced/Cheap

Connected TV (not traditional broadcast TV) for B2B is one of the few remaining arbitrage plays.

Why? Legacy firms are stuck pouring budget into “what’s always worked”. That leaves CTV inventory underused and full of opportunity for teams willing to experiment.

CTV inventory is being bought mostly by consumer brands, not B2B.

That creates a classic arbitrage:

• Low competition

• Lower CPMs than attention value

• High-quality, undistracted reach

3. People Trust People, Not Brands

Brand-led broadcasting is fading.

Creator-led pipelines are winning because authority travels faster than logos. A credible human explaining something clearly still beats any polished brand message.

4. Automation Needs Taste

The best teams aren’t fully automated, they’re human-in-the-loop.

They orchestrate four flows:

• Get data

• Consume insights

• Generate outputs

• Distribute intelligently

AI does the heavy lifting. Humans provide taste, judgement, and ambition.

5. SEO Is Becoming AEO

Search Engine Optimisation is quietly turning into Answer Engine Optimisation.

The goal isn’t ranking links.
It’s becoming the answer the model synthesises.

That’s a very different game.

From Funnels to Playgrounds

The classic funnel is basically a polite form of pressure.

Gate this.
Nudge that.
Create urgency.
Hope for the best.

In 2026, that approach feels… off.

The alternative? Marketing Playgrounds.

Instead of pushing people forward, you let them explore.

A simple framework that works incredibly well here is:

Problem → Process → Prize

• Problem: Show radical empathy. Articulate their pain better than they can.

• Process: Share the method, not the pitch.

• Prize: Paint the outcome — ROI, relief, momentum.

To do the “Problem” part properly, high-performing teams use what I’d call a clinical approach:

• Symptoms: What they notice day to day

• Causes: What’s actually broken underneath

• Treatment: What changes things

• Prognosis: What progress realistically looks like

Practical shift:
Stop gating PDFs no one reads.
Start shipping diagnostics, benchmarks, and interactive assessments that give value immediately — and feed your insight loop at the same time.

Agentic Workflows: How Marketers Go 10x (or 100x)

Prompting was phase one.

Phase two is agentic workflows, systems where multiple AI agents work together across a full process.

This doesn’t replace expertise.
It amplifies it.

Think about competitive intelligence:

One agent monitors competitor launches.
Another analyses positioning changes.
Another maps that against your roadmap.
Another drafts sales counter-narratives automatically.

The marketer becomes the orchestrator — not the executor.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth:

If you don’t internalise agentic orchestration, you don’t just fall behind, you become irrelevant.

This isn’t about shaving hours.
It’s about staying in the game.

Vibe Coding and the Rise of Personal Software

One of the most underrated shifts of this decade?

Non-technical marketers building their own software.

Tools like Cursor and Claude Code mean you no longer need to “wait for engineering”. You can just… build.

This is often called vibe coding — but don’t let the name fool you. It’s incredibly powerful.

The core structure looks like this:

The RTO Framework

• Role: Who the AI is acting as

• Task: What it needs to do

• Parameters: Guardrails and constraints

• Output: The format you want

Once you get this, you stop buying bloated SaaS tools and start building intelligence.

Custom dashboards.
Bespoke lead scoring.
Internal research tools wired directly into your CRM.

No tickets. No delays. No bottlenecks.

Multimodal Content and the YouTube Advantage

In 2025, multimodal AI quietly crossed a threshold.

Models like Gemini now understand:

• Visual pacing

• Design quality

• Movement

• Narrative structure

Not just transcripts.

That turns YouTube into an intelligence goldmine.

You can analyse a competitor’s demo, stage presence, and “vibe” then reverse-engineer it into something better.

Combine that with new-generation tools for:

• Text-perfect images

• Production-grade video

• On-brand assets at low cost

And suddenly, content velocity explodes.

The teams who win here aren’t louder, they’re sharper.

Loop Marketing: The Model That Actually Compounds

Loop Marketing is Hubspots answer to the Funnel leak. They have seen their inbound organic traffic fall off a cliff (like everyone else). So the best and brightest have come up with this new strategy as they have figured out that in AI-heavy markets, growth comes from feedback-driven loops, not linear journeys.

A simple loop that works:

1. Express

Define your point of view before AI touches it.

Use agent personas to simulate customers, pressure-test ideas, and run instant “focus groups”.

2. Tailor

This isn’t first-name personalisation.

It’s contextual relevance — the kind that feels oddly specific. Hyper-local references. Industry in-jokes. Signals that say, “We get your world.”

(When done well, conversion lifts can be dramatic.)

3. Amplify

Meet buyers inside AI engines themselves.

That’s where AEO comes in: shaping content so models surface you as the answer.

4. Evolve

No more post-mortems weeks later.

Feedback updates messaging, targeting, and offers in near real time.

That’s how loops stay alive.

So Where Does This Leave You?

Here’s the honest assessment:

Most ambitious marketers today are ahead of the average but still behind the opportunity.

The upside in this shift is 10x to 100x bigger than most people realise. But only if you stop thinking in campaigns and start thinking in systems.

Headcount is no longer leverage.
Tools are no longer differentiation.

Orchestration is the skill.

If you do one thing over the next 12 months:

• Learn to build simple agentic workflows

• Get comfortable with vibe coding

• Design loops, not funnels

That’s where the real edge is forming.

And quietly, right now, that’s where the next generation of breakout marketing teams is being built.