Melanie Hoptman.
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Melanie Hoptman, VP and MD, Brands and Agencies, APAC at LiveRamp
The marketing industry stands at a critical inflection point as it heads into 2026. Artificial intelligence is no longer experimental, and data collaboration has evolved from an emerging concept to a commercial necessity, to name just two critical themes. Amid this rapid evolution, one truth is emerging clearly: success will belong to the marketers who can simultaneously balance the near future of driving business performance balanced with what consumers want, with making inroads on testing the far future of AI, agents, and everything else marketers will need to succeed.
The year ahead won’t just test how effectively brands can adopt new tools, it will test how responsibly they can wield them. From collaborative data networks to meaningful measurement, these are three trends that will define marketing in 2026.
Let’s unpack these:
- Data collaboration will become the core of competitive advantage
In 2026, collaboration will define competitive edge. The era of siloed data is giving way to a new model of shared intelligence, where the ecosystem leverages ethical data collaboration to unlock insights for every stakeholder, leading to better performance.
Data clean rooms will continue to enable leading brands to connect first-party and partner data securely, offering real-time audience insights, transparent attribution, and unified performance measurement across fragmented touchpoints.
The timing couldn’t be more critical. According to the 2024 State of Marketing AI Report, 51% of marketing teams are now piloting or scaling AI, while 48% of leaders report medium to high confidence in evaluating AI-powered technology. As we enter a period where every company must test AI, data collaboration will be the key to helping AI train on companies’ foundational data, while ensuring customer information stays protected.
- Commerce media goes mainstream
Retail media isn’t going anywhere. The pace of retailers launching their own media networks isn’t slowing – as the leading retail media networks continue to highlight win after win, and build bigger networks encompassing more destinations, the next tier of retailers is launching their own networks while taking advantage of the latest advancements and innovations.
Next up is commerce media networks: global leaders in verticals like travel, hospitality, and entertainment have already begun recognizing the fruits of data collaboration, and launching their own networks to help marketers better reach their loyal audiences.
While it’s early days, as these vertical leaders take advantage of the cutting-edge of data collaboration, we expect that it won’t be long before they’re sharing out wins that drive even more interest to this exponentially-growing category.
- Measurement moves further into the future
As marketing matures, so too does measurement. In 2026, the industry will continue its shift from chasing vanity metrics to quantifying true business impact.
Data collaboration, powered by deterministic and interoperable identity, is continuing to close the loop between media spend and business outcomes. Publishers and marketers are able to collaborate more closely than ever before, using solutions like clean room measurement to get more transparency into performance – and better insights than ever before, unlocking even more improvements.
As the ecosystem embraces data collaboration for measurement, it will unlock cutting-edge use cases, including unified, de-duplicated views of measurement, clearing the final hurdle to an all-in view of investments for marketers. As the consumer journey continues to become more fragmented with AI and other emerging destinations, omnichannel marketing and measurement will be critical to helping marketers understand their investments and make the best decisions for future performance.
The next phase of marketing
These are far from the only critical trends that will shape marketing in 2026 – after all, we’ve only touched on AI briefly. But now, more than ever, marketers must be on the cutting-edge of their practice, given the speed that AI is infusing to how quickly the landscape changes.
In these exciting times, it’s critical that marketers test the latest advancements, and start to learn about how best to implement them into their plans.
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