The 2026 Crystal Ball: Marketers Reveal Their Top Challenges and Opportunities
From AI to ROI, InMarket surveyed nearly 1,000 marketers to understand what’s on their minds heading into 2026.
The uncertainty of 2025 isn’t slowing down. From impending tariffs and economic uncertainty impacting both consumer behavior and marketing budgets, to the emergence of new channels and technology forcing them to stay ahead or risk falling behind, marketers continue to navigate an array of complex challenges while facing escalating pressure to drive results.
However, advanced insights and technology present immense opportunities to spark innovation, drive growth, and cultivate long-lasting customer relationships.
You don’t need a crystal ball 🔮
The best way to find those light-in-the-dark insights? Learning how your peers are tackling challenges, shifting spend, and thinking about the year ahead.
To help marketers do just that, today at InMarket, we launched our annual Predictions Report, which compiles survey results from nearly 1,000 U.S.-based marketers spanning across brands and agencies. Here are three key takeaways:
1. The Top Investment Priorities: 2026 Mandates an Outcomes-Obsessed Marketing Era
18% of marketers noted that budgets/resources are their top challenge, so it’s no surprise that measurement/attribution is the top investment priority (51%), followed by performance media (49%) and omnichannel media (39%), as marketers look to optimize every ad dollar spent and accelerate real-world outcomes.
As marketers face pressure to supercharge growth amid economic challenges, it’s essential to ensure every dollar works smarter. Performance and omnichannel media proven to drive real-world impact, combined with a robust real-time measurement and optimization focused on the incremental outcomes like sales, visits, and return on advertising spend, is a recipe guaranteed for success and future-proofing performance.
As we head into 2026, one of the biggest challenges is figuring out how to do more with less. Budgets are tight and the economic outlook is shaky, which means every dollar has to work harder.
– Senior Manager, Planning
Measurement isn’t just a means to an end. It’s critical for understanding what’s working, what’s not, and finding those “a-ha” moments to accelerate outcomes while a campaign is in flight. With tighter budgets and an uncertain climate, having a real-time pulse on performance across real-world outcomes like incremental sales, visits, and iROAS unlocks pivotal opportunities for making each dollar stretch farther and drive a more meaningful impact with your target audiences.
2. AI: It’s All About Driving Efficiency, Accelerating Outcomes & Building Trust
Nearly half (46%) of predictions mentioned AI. (I mean, are we surprised?) What’s interesting is where marketers who have begun testing, implementing, or optimizing AI implementation are focusing their efforts. It’s all about efficiency and accelerating outcomes: top use cases include campaign and performance optimizations (39%), data analysis (35%), internal efficiencies (25%), ad creative brainstorming (22%), and predictive audience targeting (21%).
The 🔑 key—prioritize the right technology and partners that can help you integrate AI into your strategies and campaigns, while eliminating the risk often associated with the fast-growing technology.
3. Consumer Spending: Price and Value Will Remain King for Shoppers
As sticker shock, tariff uncertainty, and rising costs persist, more than half (55%) of marketers expect the trend toward price and value consciousness to continue in 2026, and 38% expect consumers to further cut back on spending.
Now’s the time for marketers to take all that they’ve learned from 2025 and continue innovating on successful strategies and approaches: finding new opportunities and high-growth audiences as behaviors shift, leading with value to meet customers’ demands, and doubling down on the tactics proven to drive business growth. Whether it’s amplifying critical value messaging like Digital Circulars with complementary dynamic mobile ads or CTV experiences, or interactive ads offering personalized bundles or meal deals at lower cost, reach customers consistently with value messaging throughout the purchase journey, including those final moments of consideration in-store to win that sale.
That’s not all. Download the full 2026 Predictions report to dive deeper into these topics and access all of the fantastic insights into investment priorities, top KPIs, AI implementation, and more.
The report also shares the tea on InMarket’s recommendations for overcoming core challenges and maximizing impact in 2026. Over the past few months alone, InMarket has launched innovations such as Unified Measurement, Guaranteed iROAS, and Predictive Moments to help marketers overcome the challenges of fragmented measurement and shifting consumer shopping behaviors and maximize real-world outcomes like incremental sales, visits, and iROAS.
If you’re interested in learning more about InMarket’s latest innovations to supercharge growth in 2026, contact us today or reach out to your InMarket sales representative.