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The Five Data and AI Trends Reshaping Marketing in 2026

customer identity management 15 Dec 2025

By: Kimberly Gilberti, General Manager, Experian

1. Your trends outlook says 2026 will be defined by connection. What does that mean for marketers?

For years, marketing systems have grown more fragmented. In 2026, that changes. 2026 will be the year that we see tighter alignment between activation and measurement, more interoperable identity frameworks, and stronger data foundations that support AI at scale. According to our 2026 trends report, the most successful organizations will be the ones that unify their systems so insight moves directly into action and outcomes can be validated across every channel.

2. AI has moved past the hype cycle. What will determine whether marketers actually see value from it this year?

Data quality is what will shape AI outcomes. Our report emphasizes that AI is only as good as the data it learns from, which means accuracy, freshness, consent, and interoperability are essential requirements that marketers must prioritize. Marketers who invest in high-integrity data will see AI unlock more personalization, stronger predictive modeling, and more efficient workflows. Those who rely on incomplete or outdated signals risk automating poor decisions faster.

3. Measurement seems to be changing rapidly in 2026. How are marketers rethinking it?

Measurement is shifting from a retrospective exercise to a real-time capability. Instead of waiting until a campaign ends, marketers now expect live feedback on how audiences are responding, where value is being created, and which channels are driving true incrementality. Our report notes that the walls between activation and analytics are falling, allowing teams to optimize creative, targeting, and spend mid-flight rather than reacting after the fact. This is a foundational change, and it will reshape planning, budgeting, and cross-team collaboration in 2026

4. First-party data remains a big priority. What is different about how companies will use it in 2026?

2026 is the year first-party data becomes operational rather than aspirational. Collecting data is no longer the challenge. Activating it across channels is. Our report highlights that marketers want to unify CRM, digital, and TV data to create full-funnel addressability, as well as use enrichment and modeling to expand their reach intelligently. Marketers are realizing that first-party data is only powerful when it can move securely and consistently across platforms.

5. Commerce media has grown incredibly fast. What does the next phase look like?

Commerce media is evolving from a retail-only phenomenon into a multi-industry movement. Auto, CPG, travel, financial services, and entertainment brands are now building or partnering on media networks. This expansion reflects a broader shift toward connecting exposure with transactions, whether they happen online or offline. Our report notes that identity is the engine powering this evolution because it allows marketers to tie media to real-world results and measure the value of their audiences with greater accuracy.

6. Curation is becoming a bigger part of programmatic. Why now?

Curation is emerging as a structural shift rather than a trend. With signal fragmentation, privacy reform, and concerns about efficiency, curated private marketplaces (PMPs) give marketers more control over who they reach and how. According to our report, curated supply paths now account for a significant share of programmatic spend and offer stronger transparency, real-time optimization, and access to high-quality audiences that can be activated consistently across CTV, audio, and the open web. In other words, curation is becoming the standard path to performance.

7. When you look across all five trends, what unifies them and what should marketers prioritize first?

Identity and data quality unify every trend. Every trend in our outlook depends on them. AI can only perform at the level of the data fueling it. First-party activation depends on consistent identity matching. Commerce media requires clear connections between exposure and conversion. Curation relies on accurate and privacy-forward signals. Measurement is only meaningful when marketers can trace outcomes back to real people and real actions. Our report emphasizes that the leaders in 2026 will be the companies that establish a clean, connected, privacy-first data foundation and apply it consistently across teams and channels.

MarTech Edge Interview with Dan Green - Chief Revenue Officer, Semcasting

identity management 18 May 2023

Can you tell us about your journey and what you look forward to in the new role as a CRO?

I've always been interested in tech since I first attached a modem (9600 baud) to our home landline. I was in the first wave of internet start-ups trying to make sense of and leverage the power of the internet. Since then, I’ve been fortunate to be part of many different advertising and marketing technology areas, including mobile apps, email marketing, programmatic, personalization, and rich media. It’s been a wild ride.

Everyone’s talking about the depreciation of third-party cookies, but cookies are not required to identify customers and prospects. At Semcasting, we are re-imagining identity resolution and first-party data onboarding with our patented technology.

How do you approach revenue growth, and what strategies have been most successful for you?

In plain language, ground zero articulates how we, as a company, can help our brand and agency clients and contribute to their bottom line. There is far too much “tech speak” in the industry, and frankly, I think it’s almost impossible for most marketers to wade through it all.

Tell prospects how you can specifically help them. Then we can talk about the technology that supports that solution.

Can you discuss any trends or recent changes in the industry that are impacting the business?

Brands want to control their data. So, many brands are in-housing their data and programmatic operations. Capturing, expanding on, and leveraging your first-party data equates to managing your destiny as a marketing organization.

There are a lot of former agency people who are now running corporate marketing teams. They are far more digitally savvy than the previous generation of marketers, who were more purely focused on offline channels. Today’s marketers also don’t want things to run “business as usual,” where agencies and tech partners take the lion’s share of the media budget without much to show.

How do you align sales, marketing, and customer success teams to drive revenue growth?

Everything has to be focused on the needs of the client. We have to remove friction and waste throughout the entire process. Make the value proposition easy to understand, easy to communicate, and easy to implement. You need core metrics across the organization to make sure you are making progress from a sales, marketing, and customer success standpoint so you can measure sales and marketing effectiveness and customer satisfaction.

The identity resolution market is expanding, so how is Semcasting planning to seize the opportunity?

How many companies are claiming to resolve the identity issue? Almost every company in the space has some answer to the problem. However, only some are solving the core issues of scale and cross-platform acceptance. The identity resolution market may be “expanding,” but it is also becoming more of a bottleneck - full of misinformation and poor performance.

Some solutions only work on one DSP, so that is very limiting. Other solutions are only based on emails or login users, which only reach 20-30% of the audience, so those also have no scale. Unfortunately, many agencies and brands are left with a patchwork of cookies and proxy solutions, hoping that something will change at some point.

At Semcasting, we’ve re-imagined identity from the ground up with a mandate for scale across almost all U.S. households and businesses that works across all major DSPs. The critical difference beyond scale is agency and brand control.

How do you stay up-to-date on industry developments and incorporate them into your growth strategies?

Being in the industry for many years, I’ve seen so many fads that I view new technology cautiously. I listen to my smartest customers to stay updated on industry trends. They are constantly testing tech, and if you have an open and honest long-term relationship with clients, then you can trust them to tell you what is working, what is not, and what is interesting.

How do you measure the success of your revenue growth initiatives?

The end goal is revenue, but instead of revenue, you have to look at other measures- prospect engagement (meetings), prospect tests (opportunities), growth of the overall pipeline, and tests that turn into long-term contracts. Soft measures include how clients respond to the value proposition or do we clearly understand their priorities and fit into their top 3-5 goals that they want to accomplish. If something is interesting but never a priority to your prospects, you are not in a great position to grow revenue.

How is Semcasting disrupting the market?

Our identity solutions give brands back the control of their first-party data onboarding with transparent and better match rates, affordable costs, and faster time-to-market. Knowing who matched and who didn’t empower brand marketing efficiency.

Semcasting adheres to the highest privacy compliance standards with HIPAA and SOC 2 Type II and HITRUST compliance. Marketers can measure frequency and attribution across platforms with our transparent audience-level understanding of matches and where ads are served. Our data onboarding match rates average over 85%, more than double the industry standard, and our integrations with DSPs allow audiences to be activated in minutes.

What we’ve been able to accomplish is genuinely different and ground-breaking.

What do you think about the future of First Party Identity Management, Audience Design, and Measurement?

Overall, the market will consolidate and evolve toward direct brand control. The deprecation of cookies is not the end of the world; companies must re-assess the old cookie-based approaches to reach their audiences.

How are first-party customer data and identity resolution solutions revolutionizing the B2B landscape and impacting customer experience?

From a B2B standpoint, the focus is on identifying quality prospects across many channels while understanding the customer journey. Identity resolution in B2B is about the scale of reach and finding more efficient and cost-effective paths for decision-makers.

The shift to permanent hybrid and remote work has blended consumer and B2B channels. Identity, done right, requires stocking the top of the funnel at scale with decision-makers wherever they engage. Semcasting helps B2B marketers transparently reach decision-makers and influencers.