As Content Marketing Executive at Dusted, attending the yearly Technology for Marketing (TFM) conference has become a bit of a tradition. And this year was no different.
Last month, I spent a full day roaming the halls of ExCel London, as hungry for knowledge as an overachieving fresher on her induction day. Armed with a notebook, a pen, and a flat white, I sat through a full day of keynotes and fireside chats, tracking all the marketing trends we should expect for 2026, from the rise of real-life brand experiences to the way AI is rewriting search.
Here’s what I learned. And what it means for the year ahead.
Brand experience and activation are the new battleground for attention.
The expo floor was basically a theme park for marketers. This year more than any other before, the biggest exhibitors replaced cold pitches with experiences that made people stop and connect.
Optimizely invited us to “Smash the Marketing Chaos” with a whack-a-mole arcade game.
Dotdigital built a fully fledged inn, complete with tables, lounges and a working bar where conversations flowed as easily as the drinks. Worldpay tested reaction speeds with a Batak-style “Speed of Light” challenge. And Bluestone PIM mounted an actual motorcycle in front of a screen, letting you live out a virtual ride. That’s because, when most interactions with brands happen online, it’s the unexpected in-person moments that cut through.
Each activation cleverly linked back to the brand story, whether through wordplay, familiar cultural cues, or simply creating a relatable experience. We’ve now shifted from selling services to staging experiences. The exhibitors who stood out created IRL moments that embodied their proposition in a way no sales pitch could.
Personalisation moves from promise to practice.
Ah yes, hyper-personalisation. It’s been hanging over digital marketing for years like a mirage. Always in sight, never quite reachable. It’s been a hot topic at least since my first TFM. But 2025 felt like the year it finally moved from buzzword to reality.
In her fireside chat with Andy Mulcahy, Donna Storey, Multichannel Director & C-Suite Executive at Halfords, spoke to the consumer side of the equation. For food and fashion retailers, she argued, basket data is a goldmine. Dietary choices, household patterns, even life stage can be inferred from what we buy every week. A good example she offered was how, as she walks past her local grocer every week, her phone pings with a discount for her usual breakfast staples. She steps inside, redeems the offer, and leaves with a basket full of extras. Predictive. Contextual. Commercially powerful.
But Donna also drew a line between “customisation” and true personalisation. Customisation, she explained, is remembering my name or my last purchase. Personalisation is anticipating what I’ll need next. Hyper-personalisation builds even further, shaping entire journeys around an individual. And in her view, AI has now matured enough to deliver this at scale. “If you don’t try the technology, then you can’t have an opinion about it,” she added, perhaps contentiously, for the marketers still sitting on the sidelines.
If Donna’s session showed how personalisation is transforming B2C and FMCG, Greg Landon’s talk brought it much closer to home for me as a B2B marketer. As VP of Marketing at SALESmanago & Leadoo, Greg has become a bit of a fixture at TFM, and his focus this year was on the B2B buyer journey.
Today, 83% of the B2B buying journey is self-directed, with just 17% of time spent in direct meetings with vendors. Buyers no longer wait to be sold to. They educate themselves. But this independence comes with its own expectations: 71% of them demand personalised experiences, with 67% saying they’re frustrated when content feels too generic.
Yet, even as expectations rise, engagement on web content is falling. In the US and Europe, 59% of searches in 2024 ended without a single click. And paid search spend has tripled from $105bn in 2017 to $306bn in 2024, but with fewer clicks and higher costs, returns are shrinking fast.
Greg’s solution was to shift focus from quantity to quality. With traffic harder to win and clicks in decline, the priority is no longer casting the widest net, but converting the right visitors once they land. That starts with precision, mapping the buyer journey to see which sources and pages actually drive action, and shaping every step to feel relevant and valuable. In a world of shrinking attention, qualified engagement is the new growth metric.
(And just as a side note, I’ve already noticed this increasing desire to create personalised experiences, with many leads coming to us for UX work focused on converting existing traffic.)
The context was sobering for anyone in content marketing (myself included). As AI-driven search results are swallowing clicks, zero-click searches are the new norm, and the old playbook of “more content = more traffic” just doesn’t hold.
SEO is being rewritten by AI. Brand is now the real differentiator.
And speaking of search…SEO expert Miracle Inameti-Archibong spoke about how AI changed the rules, a topic Dusted went into at length in an article on GEO.
If you also work in content, you’ve developed at least one core memory of watching your website CTR fall off a cliff in the past year. And you already know that’s because now users now get what they need by asking AI, without ever clicking through. In 2024, 59% of EU searches ended without a click.
Surfacing in AI search has become the new gold rush. Miracle’s view is that, in this environment, a strong, cohesive brand presence across every touchpoint matters more than ever. Website, socials, industry media, review platforms, even Wikipedia — the way you show up must remain consistent. AI models rely on entity recognition, so the clearer and more uniform your signals, the more confidently you’ll come up as the authoritative answer. Awards, accreditations, expert bylines and citations all feed into that authority, acting as trust signals AI crawlers use to decide who gets seen.
AI has also lowered the barrier to publishing. With thousands of near-identical posts generated by the same tools trained on the same datasets, most content ends up sounding the same. Clichés on repeat. Neutral, keyword-stuffed copy won’t cut it anymore. Distinctive, first-person perspectives and strong points of view do. As Miracle put it, when AI collapses content into sameness, neutrality sinks.
Your website, your social profiles, reviews, and industry citations are no longer separate channels; they are data points that form a single, cohesive identity. In the era of the answer engine, building this authority is the only sustainable way to win.
Miracle Inameti-Archibong, Insurance Marketing Lead at John Lewis & Partners
The implication for 2026 is that chasing long keyword lists is obsolete. What matters is building a brand AI can recognise, trust, and elevate. Distinctive voice. Consistent positioning. Owned media with authority. Less, but sharper. Targeted, credible, and unmistakably yours.
Trust unlocks new value in AI products.
AI might promise speed and scale, but trust is what sustains adoption.
Akshita Gupta, Senior Manager Data Science and AI at BT Group, framed trust around principles of fair use. Does AI create something genuinely new, or simply copy what came before? How much of the original work is being replicated? Does the output add to markets, or erode them? These questions matter because the grey zones are widening, from copyright concerns and surveillance risks in hyper-personalisation, to the rise of deepfakes and biased ad targeting.
Akshita believes trust should be built by design, not after the fact. To do this…
- Transparency and labelling must make it obvious when AI is used.
- Users need control through opt-in and opt-out choices.
- Humans must remain in the loop for critical decisions.
- Data should be collected sparingly and with consent.
- Algorithms should be audited regularly to check for bias and accuracy.
At Dusted, I’ve seen this firsthand in fintech, where proprietary bank-grade AI solutions have become a true differentiator due to the security they guarantee. Trust, when proven, is becoming a new value-add. With AI blurring the lines of what is ethical and what isn’t, providing trust might just be what differentiates one platform from another.
Trust and ethics are the foundations of innovation. And in 2026, they will also be its currency.
More insights from the frontlines.
For me, TFM 2025 was a reminder that marketing’s centre of gravity is shifting. The trends shaping 2026 won’t be defined by the next shiny tool alone, but by how we use them— with originality, intent, and confidence. The real opportunity lies in blending technology with creativity, and in having the bravery to think differently, creating distinction through immersion and humanity.
At Dusted, these are the conversations we live and breathe.
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We’ll keep sharing what we’re seeing, learning, and doing. Straight from the frontlines.