The AI era may transform not only shopping search but also how and where shopping suggestions appear. Those who start preparing today for direct AI integration will lead the charge tomorrow. AI has dramatically altered how businesses interact with consumers. Increasingly, conversations have shifted to how AI platforms themselves, rather than just search engines, could integrate direct, personalized shopping suggestions in response to user queries, potentially introducing paid or sponsored placements seamlessly into interactions.

Consumer loyalty is driven by convenience, product performance and situational need and not emotion devotion. Those are top findings from a Razorfish study that revealed love for a brand may not be enough of a driving force for consumers to remain loyalty.

“Marketers often idealize loyalty as a form of emotional devotion, but our research shows it’s driven by far more practical factors — convenience, product performance, and situational need,” Nic Chidiac, chief strategy officer at Razorfish, said in a press release on the findings.

Marketers in 2026 face two priorities: bring back real-world brand experiences and get ready for AI-led discovery, according to the “Signals from the Stage” report from the ANA Masters of Marketing Conference. 

These strategic tensions reflect a rapidly shifting consumer landscape shaped by digital fatigue, rising expectations for personalization and growing reliance on AI agents to handle day-to-day decisions. In this context, brands must reassess how they engage with audiences, both offline and through intelligent digital intermediaries.

Google’s newest model brings deeper reasoning, multimodal intelligence and agentic automation—resetting expectations for what AI delivers for CX.

The Arrival of Gemini 3. Google launches its latest update to Gemini, featuring a simultaneous rollout in its platforms and a new agent development app, Antigravity.

Reasoning meets reality. Gemini 3 brings enhanced reasoning capabilities and a 1 million-token context window, enabling sophisticated analysis of complex customer data in single requests.

The holiday season is make-or-break for email marketers. With inboxes bursting from October through New Year’s, even your most dazzling email content could disappear into spam folders if your deliverability isn’t solid.

Mailbox Providers (MBPs), such as Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook, receive an overwhelming volume of emails during peak seasons. Their systems work harder to protect their users and reward senders who follow best practices with more reliable inbox placement.

Marketing and communications leaders are facing another year of transformation, disruption, and uncertainty. From AI reshaping search and workflows, to video dominating attention, to the professionalization of influencer commerce and the critical role of social customer care, the next twelve months will give us plenty of challenges and opportunities. 

This definitive guide breaks down the 15 biggest trends that will shape the year ahead in marketing, PR, and social media. Each trend comes with clear action points and shows how Meltwater’s suite of solutions can help you not just keep up, but lead.

Many B2B organizations lack clear insight into their revenue opportunities. Demand processes may still focus on individual leads, even though more than 80% of B2B purchases involve groups of three or more people. They also may fail to recognize multiple selling opportunities within an account.

Forrester’s B2B Revenue Waterfall was designed to accommodate this complexity. It ensures that marketing and sales teams are aligned around customer value. This alignment is critical in identifying and addressing opportunities within buying groups — so teams can maximize revenue potential and achieve their growth goals.

Generative AI (genAI) is transforming B2B marketing, helping CMOs reap big gains in their outcomes. But knowing how and where to start with genAI continues to be a struggle for many. Read Forrester’s guide, “Generative AI: A Pragmatic Guide For B2B CMOs,” to learn how to capitalize on genAI’s full potential. It provides a framework for adopting genAI for B2B marketing successfully, from developing a vision and strategy to implementing the governance needed for privacy compliance.