25+ Digital Marketing Trends, Forecasts & Data (2026)

By May 2026, most of the trends marketers spent the previous two years arguing about have stopped being trends. AI is in the creative stack. Generative search is in the funnel. CTV has overtaken primetime linear in upfront commitments. Retail media is now the third-largest digital ad category in the United States. The interesting question is no longer whether to invest in any of these shifts, but which forecast to believe and how aggressively to reallocate against it.

The numbers below come from the reports the industry reads when it sets next year's budget: WARC's Marketer's Toolkit 2026, Kantar's 2026 Marketing Trends, Salesforce's State of Marketing 2026, HubSpot's State of Marketing 2026, Adobe's 2026 AI and Digital Trends, Forrester's 2026 B2C predictions, Deloitte's State of AI in the Enterprise, and eMarketer's Q2 2026 forecasts. Below are 27 statistics we could verify against their primary sources, organized into the six themes defining how 2026 marketing budgets get spent.

AI-Generated Creative and the Productivity Paradox

1. 94% of marketers plan to use AI in their content creation in 2026.

HubSpot's State of Marketing 2026 report, based on a survey of more than 1,500 global marketers, finds that 94% of respondents plan to use AI in their content creation processes in 2026, including blog articles, social posts and ad creative. AI authoring has gone from an optional efficiency play to a default workflow assumption inside the marketing org. (HubSpot)

2. 75% of marketers have adopted AI, but 84% still admit their campaigns are generic.

Salesforce's tenth-edition State of Marketing report surveyed nearly 4,500 marketers and found 75% have adopted AI, yet 84% confess their outreach still lacks personalization and 69% struggle to respond to customers promptly. AI adoption inside marketing is near universal; AI personalization is not. (Salesforce)

3. 52% of marketers say AI now makes content so easy to create that it is less effective overall.

HubSpot's 2026 report finds 52% of marketers believe AI has flooded the channel with so much average content that it has reduced effectiveness in aggregate. The takeaway is not that AI does not work, but that AI-written commodity content has lost its competitive edge and brand point of view has reclaimed it. (HubSpot)

4. 76% of organizations report content-production gains from generative AI.

Adobe's 2026 AI and Digital Trends report (3,000 executives, 4,000 customers) found 76% of organizations report moderate to significant gains in content ideation and production from generative AI, 69% cite employee productivity gains and 65% cite marketing-driven revenue growth. (Adobe)

5. Net 61% plan to lift creator content spend, but only 27% of creator content ties strongly to the brand.

Kantar's 2026 Marketing Trends report finds a net 61% of marketers plan to lift creator content investment in 2026, even as it warns that just 27% of creator content ties strongly back to brand assets. More dollars are flowing in faster than brand-fit discipline is keeping up. (Kantar)

Generative Search, AEO and the Open Web

6. 31.3% of the US population will use generative AI search in 2026.

eMarketer's 2026 forecast estimates 31.3% of the US population will use generative AI search through ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Gemini in 2026. That puts answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO) on the same footing as classic SEO in any 2026 search budget. (eMarketer)

7. 25% of customers now use AI platforms like ChatGPT as their top research tool.

Adobe's 2026 AI and Digital Trends report finds 25% of customers globally now name AI platforms such as ChatGPT their primary product research tool, ahead of brand websites, traditional reviews and search engines. 49% say they would use AI to surface personalized product recommendations and 44% to access instant customer service. (Adobe)

8. Leading advertisers will cut display ad budgets by 30% in 2026.

Forrester's 2026 B2C Marketing, CX and Digital Business Predictions forecasts that as AI summaries and chat interfaces shrink addressable audiences on the open web, leading advertisers will redirect dollars away from display, cutting budgets by 30% in favor of CTV, streaming audio and social video. (Forrester)

9. 19% of B2B buyers using gen-AI feel less confident in their purchasing decisions.

Forrester's 2026 B2B predictions find 19% of B2B buyers using gen-AI and conversational search to research vendors feel less confident in their decisions because of inaccurate or unreliable AI output. Forrester also forecasts more than $10 billion in lost enterprise value in 2026 from ungoverned gen-AI use in go-to-market. (Forrester)

10. ChatGPT e-commerce traffic converts at a 31% higher rate than organic search.

eMarketer's 2026 GEO and AEO FAQ reports ChatGPT-referred e-commerce traffic converts at roughly 31% higher than traditional organic search, even as paid CTRs on queries with AI Overviews have dropped by as much as 68%. AI search shrinks the funnel and improves the quality of what reaches the bottom. (eMarketer)

Short-Form Video and CTV Take Over the Video Stack

11. 60% of marketers use short-form video; 104% more name it their most valuable channel than in 2024.

HubSpot's State of Marketing 2026 reports 60% of marketers use short-form video, and the share calling it their single most valuable channel grew 104% versus 2024. The three top ROI formats are all video: short-form at 49%, long-form at 29% and live-streaming at 25%. (HubSpot)

12. US CTV ad spending will reach roughly $38 billion in 2026.

eMarketer's Q2 2026 digital video forecast puts US CTV ad spending at approximately $38 billion in 2026, up almost 14% from $33.35 billion in 2025. Annual growth is projected to cool from 14% in 2026 to closer to 11% by 2029 as the format matures from breakout to baseline. (eMarketer)

13. CTV upfront ad spend will exceed primetime linear upfront spend for the first time in 2026.

eMarketer projects US CTV upfront ad spending of $17.73 billion in 2026 versus $16.98 billion for primetime linear, the first time the streaming category has won the upfront commitment race. National and local linear TV spend, excluding political, is forecast to fall 2.4% to $27.9 billion. (eMarketer)

14. Retail is the largest CTV ad category at just under one-fifth of all spending.

eMarketer's 2026 CTV trends report finds retail is the single largest CTV ad category, claiming just under one-fifth of all dollars and ahead of CPG, automotive and financial services. The concentration tracks the merger of retail media and CTV inventory through 2025. (eMarketer)

Retail Media and First-Party Data

15. US retail media ad spend will reach $71.09 billion in 2026.

eMarketer's H2 2025 retail media forecast tracks US retail media ad spend rising from $60.32 billion in 2025 to $71.09 billion in 2026. Retail media is now the third-largest digital ad category in the United States and the fastest-growing line on most CPG and DTC media plans. (eMarketer)

16. Amazon and Walmart will capture 89% of incremental US retail media spend in 2026.

The same eMarketer forecast finds Amazon Ads and Walmart Connect will absorb 89% of incremental US retail media spend in 2026, with Amazon at roughly 79.7% share and Walmart Connect at 8.0%. Every other RMN eMarketer tracks is forecast to stay flat or lose share through 2027. (eMarketer)

17. Off-site retail media: $7.76B in social, $6.10B in CTV in 2026.

eMarketer's H2 2025 retail media report breaks out where the new dollars flow: $7.76 billion to retail-data-targeted social ads and $6.10 billion to retail-data-targeted CTV in 2026. Off-site audience extension is now the growth engine, not on-site sponsored products. (eMarketer)

18. Retail media CTV ad sales will more than double from $4.99 billion in 2025 to $10.28 billion by 2028.

eMarketer projects retail media CTV ad sales doubling from $4.99 billion in 2025 to $10.28 billion by 2028 as commerce data binds tightly to streaming inventory. One in five CTV ad dollars is projected to flow through a retail media network by 2027. (eMarketer)

Agentic Commerce and AI Agents in the Funnel

19. 24% of AI users already use an AI shopping assistant.

Kantar's 2026 Marketing Trends report finds 24% of consumers who use AI already use an AI shopping assistant to research or transact, prompting Kantar to argue CMOs must now optimize their brands for non-human consumers as well as humans. The brand discovery surface is no longer purely a search box and a homepage. (Kantar)

20. Only 13% of marketers currently use agentic AI, but 82% using or planning agents expect ROI lift.

Salesforce's State of Marketing 2026 finds adoption of agentic AI inside marketing teams remains low at 13%, yet 82% of marketers using or planning to use agents expect major or moderate ROI improvements. High performers using AI agents report reclaiming roughly 8 hours per week. (Salesforce)

21. 74% of enterprises expect at-least-moderate AI agent use by 2027; only 21% have mature governance.

Deloitte's State of AI in the Enterprise 2026 (3,235 leaders) found 74% expect their organizations to use AI agents at least moderately by 2027, with 23% planning extensive deployment. Just 21% have a mature governance model for agentic AI today, the gap that powers Forrester's $10B B2B prediction. (Deloitte)

22. 49% of brands expect consumers will primarily want to engage via AI agents.

Adobe's 2026 AI and Digital Trends finds 49% of brand respondents expect consumers will primarily want to engage via AI agents rather than direct websites or apps in the medium term. The same respondents flag a yawning gap between agentic ambition and current data readiness. (Adobe)

Budgets, Trust and the Post-Cookie Reality

23. Global ad spend will grow 8.1% to $1.27 trillion in 2026.

WARC Media's December 2025 forecast, embedded in the Marketer's Toolkit 2026, puts global ad spend growth at 8.1% to $1.27 trillion in 2026, a deceleration from the 10.9% recorded in 2024 but still a record dollar figure. The macro picture is healthy; the individual-marketer picture is not. (WARC)

24. 42% of marketers expect their own budgets to be lower in 2026, nearly double last year's 22%.

WARC's Voice of the Marketer survey, which underpins the Marketer's Toolkit, finds 42% of marketers expect lower budgets in 2026, nearly double the 22% who said the same a year ago. Just 54% think conditions will improve, down 11 percentage points from 65% in the prior year. The macro tailwind is not landing evenly on the ground. (WARC)

25. One-third of brands will erode customer trust in 2026 through self-service AI.

Forrester's 2026 B2C predictions warn that a third of companies will damage their CX this year by deploying gen-AI chatbots and virtual agents prematurely, driven by cost-cutting pressure that ships self-service AI before it is ready. (Forrester)

26. 83% of marketers say customers now expect two-way conversations.

Salesforce's State of Marketing 2026 finds 83% of marketers say customers now expect to reply to a marketing message and get a real response. That is the demand-side reason agentic AI shows up in the same survey: nothing else scales two-way engagement at marketing-channel volume. (Salesforce)

27. AI-augmented marketers reclaim roughly 8 hours per week.

The same Salesforce report finds high-performing marketers using AI agents reclaim roughly 8 hours per week of manual coordination and reporting, freeing time for strategy and creative. 75% of AI-using marketers report higher satisfaction with cross-functional data access versus 60% of non-AI users. (Salesforce)

Frequently Asked Questions

The 2026 trend list reads less like a forecast and more like a relocation map. Search is moving into chat, TV money into streaming, display money into video and CTV, retail data into every channel that touches a checkout. Through all of it, one constant holds: shoppers still want a good deal, and a verified on-page promo code earns more trust than any AI summary. At 99coupons.ai, that is exactly the layer we own in 2026's discovery shift: real deals from real brand pages, surfaced cleanly whether you found us through Google, an AI agent, a creator video or a CTV ad that closes the loop at the cart.