2026 DX Trends Report, Vol. 1
Expert Predictions for the Year Ahead
In the first installment of our new series on digital experience trends, we asked 15 marketing and digital leaders to share one prediction that will define the industry in 2026.
Any experience that takes owned channels and transforms them into experiential destinations where someone can get all of the answers they need, right away, up front, with no fluff — but in a way that's entertaining, educational and "sticky" — that's what's going to win in 2026. No more boring websites with jargony headlines, or desperate AEO plays that turn content into ChatGPT slop.
I want to see companies actually leveraging the (often, very few) owned channels they have control over to make it effortless yet memorable for people to feel like they're part of their buying journey, and not just a victim of a generic one. Not just founder-led growth, but buyer-led growth.
Give me what I need, make it stick and make it so that I don't want or need to leave you behind and go find something new.
Content in the form of answers will be the new form of creativity. Everyone is starting with a question — “How do I do this?”, “What’s the best solution for this?”, “Why is this happening?”
We’re no longer in an era where people scroll for inspiration; they search for resolution. The brands that win will design experiences that feel less like campaigns and more like copilots, anticipating the question behind the query and delivering not just content, but clarity.
Brand is back! But this isn't just my prediction because you know I've got the data in hand to back it up.
Last year, the vast majority of marketers we surveyed said that they were being forced (largely against their instincts) to prioritize short-term gains over long-term brand building, as we all continued to adjust to an extremely cautious investor market. Anything that wasn't attributable was simply not an option for many marketers, especially those who didn't have the advantage of long-term trust with their CEOs and boards.
But the pendulum has swung in the other direction. Members of the C-suite who don't directly touch marketing have become much more acquainted with the impact of brand equity on the bottom line and now about two-thirds of those who are going to touch their brand vs. demand budgets say they'll be increasing investment in the former. I’m excited to see what this translates to out in the field.
We predict (and already see it happening) the shift from generative AI to agentic systems. Meaning, brands won’t just create content faster, they will automate decisioning, merchandising and experience delivery in real time.
Instead of personalization being rules-based or pre-planned, experiences will be dynamically composed based on live customer signals, business priorities and inventory or campaign context.
Distribution is the core challenge for marketing at the moment, and as inbound traffic acquisition loses effectiveness and favor (top-funnel SEO traffic, social ads), other channels such as digital PR, LLM citations, Reddit and LinkedIn will become oversaturated.
Digital PR in particular will get messy, because digital media publications are shrinking, and many journalists are exiting to take in-house marketing roles. Everyone is looking for new performance channels. The winners will pay close attention to how users curate experiences they genuinely enjoy online.
Creative systems will become the new marketing infrastructure. Teams are realizing that scalable, data-informed creative isn’t just nice to have, it’s what keeps campaigns agile and on-brand across channels.
Next year, we’ll see marketing leaders investing in design operations the same way they once invested in martech. The focus will shift from “what tool do we need?” to “how do we make our creative engine more intelligent, flexible and fast?”
The winners will be the teams that treat creative production as a strategic discipline, not just a service line.
I predict there will be a drawback on overreliance of AI. I think we are nearing the apex of usefulness of genAI for marketers, from copywriting to creating images and video.
Creativity and creative problem solving is at the very core of all marketing. When marketers atrophy that creative muscle, their work will suffer, and that muscle may take a long time to build up again. The overreliance will only continue to worsen this. Thus, the phrase "AI slop."
We’ll witness the death of the MQL — with AI writing the eulogy.
Remember when we marketers used to get excited about form fills and download counts? Those days are over. Buyers aren't scrolling through endless blog posts anymore, they're asking AI to do the research heavy lifting. Google's AI Overviews are becoming the primary research assistant for most decision-makers.
In its place, we’ll see a new playbook and metrics that will matter:
Instead of obsessing over organic click-through rates, we’ll become obsessed with measuring AI Share of Voice (SoV). It's not about how many people click, it's about how often our content gets cited in the top three spots of AI-generated answers. This is our new measure of top-of-funnel visibility in the dark funnel.
I expect marketing leaders to move away from MQLs towards AI Brand Sentiment & Velocity aka some type of measurement of how favorably (and accurately) AI engines describe our brand and reflect our brand equity. Are we being cited as trusted experts? That's the real measure of brand resilience.
My hot take is that brands who don't adapt to this AI-driven trust economy are going to become digital ghosts. No visibility, no credibility, no revenue.
The winners won't be the ones with the most content. They'll be the ones with the most trustworthy, structured and authoritative information that AI can confidently reference.
Customers’ expectations are always increasing, and I think with the sudden rise in the use of AI they're starting to recognise where it's being used, and importantly sensing when it's being used effectively and when it's used badly.
I think customers are going to start expecting AI to provide them with convenience and speed. Things like effective chatbots that can help them solve queries specific to them and their account, in a way that chatbots of old couldn't handle, and far quicker than a phone call — because who wants to actually speak to a person? (You can thank us Millennials for starting that trend!) AI is generally good at that sort of thing, so it provides real value to customers that they can clearly see and experience.
Whereas I think customers will start to recognise where it is being used for less valuable purposes, in areas like creative writing or design. Here is where AI starts to become used in a way that we'd describe as "slop," and it signals a company that doesn't take enough care around its image and is attempting too many shortcuts.
Customers are wise now to what has been made with AI, and we're still in the realm of the Uncanny Valley with a lot of the images and videos it produces, so I can see that negatively affecting the perception of some brands who misuse AI by letting it do the things it's not actually that great at compared to a professional.
2026 digital experience predictions: 3 top takeaways
From the return of brand-building to the evolution of AI’s role in customer engagement, our experts’ predictions reflected a modern perspective on what it will take to outperform your competitors in the year ahead. Here are three key points that came up repeatedly:
1. The rise of real-time adaptive experiences
Leaders are shifting focus from simple generative AI (e.g., creating content faster) to building complex, agentic AI systems that automate decision-making and dynamically compose experiences.
In the view of today’s digital leaders, pre-planned personalization is already obsolete. The goal now is to create fluid experiences that adapt in real-time based on customer intent.
Related: Welcome to the ‘Context Economy’: There’s a new digital currency up for grabs
2. Re-centering on human connection, authenticity and emotional intelligence
As AI handles more routine tasks, the ultimate brand differentiator will become uniquely human capabilities. Digital experience leaders are already seeing customer pushback against low-effort "AI slop" in creative work, with our experts emphasizing the need to double down on building genuine trust, providing tailored service and leveraging emotional intelligence.
3. The shift from MQLs and clicks to AI authority (AI SoV)
With more and more buyers relying on AI-powered search (Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT) for the bulk of their research, traditional top-of-funnel metrics are quickly losing relevance. The new measure of visibility will be AI Share of Voice (AI SoV), or the frequency and accuracy with which a brand's content is cited as the definitive, trusted source by AI engines.
Unlike old-school vanity metrics like referral clicks and MQLs, you can’t game your way into building trust. Build genuine authority around your product category and industry, and the result will be more AI citations, greater visibility and increased revenue growth.
For more digital experience industry trends, predictions and insights, visit contentstack.com/resources.
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