MTM Agency Managing Director Wes Maynard shares his perspective on how many of the fundamentals of digital marketing were upended in 2025, and how agile, human-led, AI-aware strategies are the way forward in 2026.
Across articles, conference talks, webinars, and LinkedIn posts, a familiar pattern keeps appearing. Marketing leaders are building their 2026 strategies using frameworks that were already ageing in 2024.
I am seeing the same budget splits, the same channel priorities, and the same belief that marginal optimisation is enough to stay competitive.
2025 fundamentally altered how marketing works, and those changes make many 2026 plans outdated before they’re even approved.
The good news is that by recognising these shifts early, marketing leaders have the opportunity to build strategies for 2026 that are more agile, creative, and effective by adapting quickly, leveraging AI wisely, and putting human insight at the centre of every decision.
What 2025 changed about marketing channels
It seems that in 2025, every part of the marketing mix reached a tipping point at once.
Paid search costs continued to climb, while AI-driven search tools fragmented the way audiences find information. Gartner predicted in 2024 that traffic from traditional search engines to websites will drop by around 25% in 2026 as platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews become primary discovery tools.
Most SEO strategies still focus on traditional engines, but audiences increasingly rely on AI-powered platforms, especially in research and discovery.
Paid social experienced a separate challenge. Years of privacy updates in iOS finally cascaded through performance data, erasing previously dependable targeting options. AI-driven audience optimisation partially filled the gap, but marketers lost control over strategic decisions.
For many sectors, I’ve observed that cost per acquisition rose 15–20% year over year, not because creative quality declined, but because more brands competed for smaller, less precisely targetable audiences.
PR and earned media faced their own upheaval. Journalists widely adopted AI research tools, changing how stories are sourced and evaluated. Traditional press releases lost influence, while media coverage shifted as outlets adapted to AI content policies and changing audience trust.
The publications' audiences value evolved. The formats that gain coverage shifted. And the time needed to build meaningful media relationships shortened.
Meanwhile, organic social reach continued its long-term decline (however we're finding new ways to buck this trend and even improve historical organic reach metrics). In 2025, even paid promotion struggled to compensate. Algorithm changes increasingly favour native content over external links, making it harder to drive traffic to owned channels despite the budget .
2025 was marked by systemic disruption across the entire marketing mix; I think we’ve all felt it. The upside is that within such upheaval comes the opportunity for marketers to totally rethink their strategies, experiment boldly, and emerge in 2026 with a more resilient and high-performing marketing strategy.
Maintaining brand trust in an AI-driven marketing landscape
AI adoption accelerated as predicted. Ninety-two per cent of marketers said AI affected their role, with 88% using it daily, according to Hubspot’s latest State of Marketing Report.
What few forecasts considered was audience resistance. Coca-Cola’s “all-AI” Christmas ad became an example of how consumers reject content that feels impersonal.
Today, 50% of consumers can detect AI-generated content, and 52% engage less when they sense it lacks human involvement, according to Bynder.
This has immediate implications across channels. AI-generated social posts see lower engagement, AI-written PR pitches are often ignored, and AI-optimised ad copy may underperform human-written alternatives despite seeming technically efficient.
The efficiency gains that many expected are now being offset by disengagement across every channel.
PPC campaigns with AI-generated display creative experienced lower click-through rates as audiences developed detection skills. AI-generated posts have 30% less reach. PR secured through AI-enhanced pitching delivered lower authority and engagement.
Marketing leaders are returning focus to authentic brand storytelling as a key differentiator in an environment where everyone has access to AI. Competitive advantage now comes from human insight and genuine connection, not speed as we explore in our blog, The psychology behind brand: Leveraging cognitive psychology for a memorable impact, which looks at how understanding memory, emotion, and perception can make your brand storytelling more authentic and memorable.
Why the annual planning model needs a rethink
Traditional annual planning assumes stability. Channels perform consistently, audience behaviour changes slowly, and competitors shift predictably. In 2025, all these assumptions collapsed simultaneously.
PPC budgets assumed stable cost-per-click and conversion trends, but both were disrupted by AI search adoption and privacy updates. Social strategies assumed targeting would remain consistent, which it did not. PR relied on media dynamics that AI research tools transformed.
The planning cycle itself became a liability. By the time 2024 data informed 2026 strategies, the market had already moved.
I’m seeing this across industries. Marine marketers using old CPA benchmarks found them irrelevant. Energy communications teams doubled down on AI content while audiences became wary. Professional services firms allocating 40% of their budget to LinkedIn faced halved organic reach and inflated costs.
The gap between planning timelines and market speed grew dramatically. Budgets became outdated in weeks. Content calendars committed resources to formats that audiences ignored. Media strategies targeted outlets whose priorities had changed.
Turning market shifts into strategic advantage
Your 2026 plan won’t struggle because of poor execution. It will struggle because it was built on outdated assumptions.
Marketing leaders referenced earlier were not incompetent. They applied proven methods to a market that no longer rewarded historical patterns.
The key question isn’t whether your strategy is logical. It’s whether your planning process can adapt fast enough to remain relevant.
2025 didn’t just change tactics. It accelerated the pace of change itself. Any strategy that can’t respond will execute plans that were already obsolete before launch.
Looking ahead to 2026
2026 requires a new approach, not improved forecasting, but adaptive frameworks designed to navigate uncertainty across the marketing mix.
It’s worth remembering that periods of disruption have always been where the strongest marketing strategies are forged.
This year challenged familiar playbooks, questioned long-held assumptions, and forced many teams to pause and rethink.
The opportunity now is to slow down just enough to make different decisions, build more adaptable strategies, and reconnect marketing with real human insight.
We’re heading into 2026 with optimism. Not because the landscape will be simpler, but because marketing has the chance to become more thoughtful, more creative, and more effective.
From all of us at MTM, we wish you a restful break and a strong start to the year ahead.
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Get in contact with us to book your free 2026 planning consultation and let us help you tackle the next year with a plan that is agile, human-led, and future-ready.
FAQs
How is AI changing search, and what does it mean for the future of SEO?
AI is fundamentally reshaping how people discover information online. The availability of AI answer engines means that SEO has expanded beyond the traditional ‘10 blue links’ and now the competition for visibility is happening across platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI overviews.
These platforms are changing search behaviour by summarising information directly in the results. This shift means traditional traffic models are breaking. AI search and Google search now coexist, and brands must optimise for both. Understanding how AI is changing search is critical for brands that want to remain discoverable as conversational and zero-click search accelerates.
Our SEO approach focuses on AI-aware SEO strategies that balance classic search fundamentals with optimisation for AI-driven discovery and citation. For more in-depth insight into changing search behaviour, take a look at our blog on the future of SEO.
What is privacy-first marketing, and why is first-party data now essential?
Privacy-first marketing is a response to tightening regulations, platform changes, and the steady loss of third-party tracking. Brands can no longer rely on granular audience targeting or perfect attribution.
A strong first-party data strategy (also called a 1st party data strategy) puts owned data, CRM records, email engagement, website behaviour, and customer insights at the centre of marketing decision-making.
This shift requires brands to earn trust, encourage direct relationships, and design campaigns that perform even as tracking accuracy declines. We help organisations with data-led marketing strategies. We rebuild performance around privacy-first marketing models that are resilient, ethical, and scalable.
How is the future of public relations changing with AI and evolving media dynamics?
The future of public relations is being reshaped by AI in journalism, changing newsroom workflows, and declining trust in promotional content. Press releases alone no longer drive visibility or authority.
Modern earned media strategy focuses on relevance, credibility, and relationship-building. Journalists increasingly rely on AI tools to research stories, which means earned content marketing must be genuinely insightful to surface in those systems.
The best earned media campaigns now integrate earned marketing channels with SEO, social, and brand storytelling. For a deeper look into how an interdisciplinary approach maximises value, take a look at our blog on integrated strategies for digital PR success.
How should brands adapt to social media algorithm changes in 2026?
Social media algorithm changes have significantly reduced organic reach, referral traffic, and control over audience targeting. Platforms increasingly prioritise native content and paid distribution, making old growth playbooks unreliable.
A modern social media strategy 2026 requires brands to move away from volume-driven posting and focus on relevance, creativity, and platform-native storytelling. Performance now depends on how well content aligns with each platform’s engagement signals rather than follower counts. At MTM, we help brands redesign social strategies that work within today’s algorithmic realities.