By 2028, 60% of brands will use agentic AI to facilitate individualized interactions optimized with their customers, according to Gartner. This change in marketing strategy will also modify traditional channel-based approaches and lay the foundation for the beginning of an era of personalized and autonomous interaction. The AI agents that brands will employ to do this will function as persistent digital concierges, encompassing marketing, sales and customer support to generate hyper-personalized experiences.
For Emily Weiss, Marketing Researcher at Gartner, «This marks the end of channel-based marketing as we know it. Marketers should prepare by implementing strong data governance, and tracking changes to the customer roadmap weekly. Also integrating agent systems into martech stacks to enable secure and ethical customization at scale.«.
Additionally, by 2027, brands will allocate half of their influencer marketing budgets to content and creator authenticity initiatives. These initiatives will include identity verification, content provenance and measures against deepfakes, with the aim of optimizing engagement and monetization in AI search environments. This change is based on the rise of AI-generated content and the increasing visibility of socially-sourced content in search results.
In this sense, Weiss points out that Trust is already the most valuable asset in influencer marketingadding that brands should adopt clear labeling conventions, in addition to investing in third-party verification tools and monitoring the quality of creator interaction, to build trust. This is to ensure transparency and compliance as AI-generated content becomes commonplace.
Weiss also points out that all of these predictions point to “to a fundamental redefinition of marketing, from channel-based strategies to AI-powered personalization, and from engagement metrics to trust metrics. Brands that act now will lead the next era of marketing. Those who delay run the risk of being left behind«.
