Contentful leaders on the shifts shaping marketing, AI, and digital experiences in 2026

Every year brings no shortage of predictions about what’s next for marketing, technology, and digital experiences. What’s different heading into 2026 is the level of consequence. Decisions teams make now about AI, content, and personalization will shape not just performance metrics, but how brands earn trust, scale responsibly, and stay relevant.

The predictions that follow come from Contentful leaders, reflecting perspectives across marketing, product, finance, and the office of the CEO. Together, they highlight where experimentation is giving way to execution, and where surface-level adoption is being replaced by deeper operational change.

Taken as a set, these points of view offer a clear signal: the year ahead will reward focus, discipline, and intent. The question for leaders is no longer whether to engage with these shifts, but how deliberately they do so.

1. A new generation of ‘Full-Stack Marketer’ is on the rise | Elizabeth Maxson, CMO

AI is opening the door for marketers to elevate their role, turning insight and creativity into measurable impact like never before.

This year will be defined by a new generation of full-stack marketers: professionals who bridge human intuition and creativity with technical fluency to build connected workflows, write effective prompts, and embed AI into daily operations.

Those who embrace this moment will gain a decisive edge in speed, precision, and audience relevance, turning AI from a challenge into a competitive advantage. Brands that hesitate risk being outpaced not just in campaigns, but in their ability to innovate and connect meaningfully with customers.

2. The Great Content Collapse hits in 2026: Only smart brands will survive | Karthik Rau, CEO

Budgets are tightening, and teams are under pressure to prove meaningful ROI on their AI investments, leading many to produce more content simply because volume is the easiest metric to show.

But this surge in output isn’t improving performance, it’s accelerating what we call "Content Collapse". As quality drops and sameness floods every channel, audiences disengage, organic discovery slows, and pipelines weaken. The collapse won’t be caused by too much content, but by too much low-value content created in the rush to justify AI.

The brands that break the pattern will treat AI as a co-creator, not a shortcut, using it to amplify human insight, restore differentiation, and rebuild authentic connection. 

3. 'Experience as Data' will emerge as the next major evolution after 'Content as Data' | Karl Rumelhart, CPO

Just as organizations once realized that content must be structured, reusable, and API-driven, they will now come to see that the experience itself—its layout, hierarchy, component structure, and variations—must also exist as machine-readable data rather than code.

By transforming design and presentation into portable, composable data models, brands will unlock true omnichannel delivery, AI-generated experiences, and marketer-controlled orchestration. The shift will redefine the digital experience stack, elevating experience schemas, assemblies, and layout models to first-class citizens alongside content. 

This year will be defined by a new generation of full-stack marketers: professionals who bridge human intuition and creativity with technical fluency to build connected workflows, write effective prompts, and embed AI into daily operations.

Elizabeth Maxson, CMO, Contentful

4. AI valuations may compress, but adoption is just getting started | Carla Cooper, CFO

2025 will be remembered as the year equity markets fully priced in the promise of AI, fueled by an unprecedented capex super-cycle that lifted annual AI investment by major platforms from roughly $100B in 2023 to an estimated $300–400B in 2025. That spending, combined with record profitably among a handful of leaders, lifted AI-exposed stocks to stretched valuations and fueled late-year “AI bubble” concerns.

In 2026, we will see a reset in how value is measured. AI multiples may compress, but enterprise AI adoption will accelerate as companies move from experimentation to operationalization. Capital markets will increasingly reward companies that can show how AI is improving cycle times and error rates, not just how often they mention it on earnings calls.  

CFOs will be expected to show, line by line, how AI is improving unit economics. The hype trade may cool, but the compounding impact of AI on productivity and decision quality will quietly strengthen. This year, AI’s real value will show up less in valuation premiums and more in how efficiently businesses actually run.

5. Websites will finally catch up to email personalization standards | Elizabeth Maxson, CMO

Hyper-personalized emails have become the standard. They greet consumers by name, anticipate their needs, and deliver the right offer at the right moment. Yet, when those same consumers arrive at a website, they often get an impersonal, one-size-fits-all experience. As brands look to cut through the noise, we’ll see a shift toward truly dynamic digital experiences that adapt in real time.

Imagine a returning customer being shown a tailored landing page that highlights new features or loyalty rewards, while a first-time visitor sees a version focused on education and trust-building. Many marketing leaders still believe this level of personalization is too complex or time-intensive to execute, but that perception will be challenged in 2026.

With AI now able to automate the heavy lifting, personalization at scale will move from a daunting ambition to an everyday reality. The next wave of brand loyalty will come from those who make every touchpoint in the customer journey feel like a one-to-one conversation.

6. 30-word-search will redefine personalization | Karthik Rau, CEO

In 2026, how people search will transform personalization. The average Google search is four words, but LLM queries can be thirty.

Users no longer search for “best tennis racket.” They ask, “What’s the best tennis racket for a beginner with a two-handed backhand who plays mostly on clay and struggles with control on volleys?” They aren’t just searching, they’re briefing the system, expecting outputs that reflect both their words and intent.

Personalization must evolve from superficial greetings to context-driven, nuanced experiences. Every detailed query represents a rich intent signal: needs, preferences, even emotional cues, all embedded in natural language.

The companies that can interpret and act on those signals—connecting LLM interactions to real-time data and adaptive experiences—will set a new bar for relevance. 

The brands that break the pattern will treat AI as a co-creator, not a shortcut, using it to amplify human insight, restore differentiation, and rebuild authentic connection. 

Karthik Rau, CEO, Contentful

7. Targeting will define winners | Karl Rumelhart, CPO

In 2026, the economics of marketing will shift dramatically as both the creation and distribution of content approach zero marginal cost. Digital marketing was built on the breakthrough that distribution was essentially free, enabling brands to win by investing in better content and pushing it everywhere.

But with generative AI driving the cost of content creation toward zero as well, the value will shift to targeting and selection—the ability to maximize every interaction by identifying exactly which content, variant, or message should be delivered in each moment.

In the next wave of marketing, success will belong not to those who maximize the reach of each piece of content, but to those who best optimize each experience. 

8. Employment evolves: AI reinforces need for human talent | Carla Cooper, CFO

What’s changing is not just how many people companies employ, but what those people do and how much impact they can have. 

AI will increasingly displace certain tasks, but humans who know how to orchestrate and supervise AI will drive disproportionate impact. Those humans—augmented by technology—will become some of the most valuable employees in the organization.

Why? What do humans do better (at least for now!) than AI? Judgment, ethics and context remain critical.  Creativity and differentiation are necessary to stand out.  Trust and governance remain high priorities.  And, humans rather than AI are better at system-level orchestration: what problem we’re solving, for whom, and how we’ll know it worked. 

9. Evidence-based creativity is the skill every marketer needs | Elizabeth Maxson, CMO

As marketers embrace AI tools, creative instincts alone won’t cut it, and data without imagination will fall flat. Too often, marketers only look at performance data at the end of a campaign to gauge success and optimize for next time. However, with AI insights now available in real time, marketers will use data to drive strategy and refine creative ideas throughout their campaigns.

This year, “evidence-based creativity”—the fusion of AI-driven insights and human intuition—will shift from a nice-to-have to a must-have skill. The best marketers will harness AI at the start of the process to shape strategy, guide creative direction, and identify opportunities before execution begins. They’ll then use AI to test and refine these ideas at unprecedented speed, proving their real-world impact and resonance.

With 40% of marketing leaders already anxious about demonstrating ROI on AI investments (source), the industry will be led by those who can blend insight with imagination from the very beginning to drive meaningful connection and, ultimately, conversion.

10. The generative stack becomes composable | Karthik Rau, CEO

The future of AI isn’t one big model, it’s a composable network of many.

Companies will orchestrate these components like microservices, assigning tasks to the model best suited to handle it, while sharing a unified data and observability layer.

Interoperability, not model supremacy, becomes the true differentiator, allowing organizations to mix proprietary models, open-source tools, and vendor APIs without breaking workflows.

In 2026, teams will design their generative stack for modularity, enabling new capabilities, context layers, and agents to plug in seamlessly and scale efficiently. 

Just as organizations once realized that content must be structured, reusable, and API-driven, they will now come to see that the experience itself—its layout, hierarchy, component structure, and variations—must also exist as machine-readable data rather than code.

Karl Rumelhart, CPO, Contentful

Bottom line

While each prediction stands on its own, a common thread runs through them all. In 2026, advantage will come from clarity; clear goals for AI, clear standards for quality, and clear ownership of the customer experience. Volume, speed, and novelty alone won’t be enough.

The leaders who pull ahead will be those who connect technology decisions to real outcomes, balance automation with human judgment, and design systems that can adapt without losing coherence. That work isn’t theoretical. It’s already underway.

As you plan for the year ahead, Contentful can support you to turn foresight into action. The teams that do will be best positioned to build experiences that are not just smarter, but more meaningful at scale. Contact us for a hands-on demonstration that's tailor-made for you and your organization.

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