Five trends that marketing professionals shouldn’t underestimate in 2026
-The mass adoption of AI is generating an unexpected side effect: the standardization of insights.
-According to a GWI report, consumers say one thing and do another in areas such as sustainability.
Artificial intelligence, fragmented consumption, and transformed audiences are forcing brands to rethink how they understand insights, engagement, and decision-making. GWI’s latest global report, «Connecting the Dots,» identifies five major trends that many marketing strategies are still underestimating and that will be crucial by 2026.
The report’s findings are based on its global consumer study, compiled from an annual sample of over 230,000 internet users aged 16 to 64, spread across more than 50 markets worldwide. Through ongoing quantitative surveys with longitudinal behavioral analysis, GWI detects sustained changes in attitudes, media consumption, technology, and brands.
When AI Accelerates But Impoverishes Insights
The adoption of artificial intelligence in marketing is now virtually universal. According to GWI, 84% of advertisers and marketing professionals in the United States use AI tools in their work, with platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot leading the way. However, this massive adoption is generating an unexpected side effect: the standardization of insights.
The problem isn’t AI itself, but the data it relies on. Many tools primarily work with information available on the open web: outdated, poorly segmented, inconsistent, or biased data. The result is predictable, stereotypical, and overly general conclusions that tend to reproduce the same patterns repeatedly. GWI warns that as the pressure to act quickly increases, so does the risk of strategies being built on insights that are «good enough» but not necessarily relevant.
The report highlights a paradox in this regard: although professionals state that consumer insights are critical for decision-making, nearly half of all business decisions are still made without relying on them. Friction caused by time constraints, complexity, or data overload pushes companies to rely on intuition. Therefore, the opportunity for 2026 lies in integrating structured and up-to-date data directly into AI systems, combining speed with analytical depth, and without abandoning human judgment as a central element of the process.
The Great Gap Between What Is Said and What Is Done
Another key trend identified by GWI is the growing contradiction between stated intentions and actual behavior. Consumers say one thing and do another, especially in areas such as sustainability, privacy, and purchasing decisions. Far from being an anomaly, this gap is a structural constant of contemporary consumption.
The report also dismantles the classic dichotomy between planned and impulsive purchases. More than half of consumers make impulsive online purchases at least once a month, but even in high-value categories, such as technology or travel, significant levels of unplanned purchases are detected. GWI demonstrates that many seemingly impulsive decisions actually stem from latent desires and prior familiarity with brands or products.
Longitudinal analysis between 2019 and 2025 also shows that external factors (scarcity, inflation, supply chain disruptions, etc.) have significantly altered the relationship between prior intention and final purchase. For brands, this implies a change of approach: moving away from thinking in terms of closed activation windows and assuming that the consumer is “always in the market,” with decisions triggered when a trust threshold is reached, not when an explicit intention is expressed.
Social media dominates attention span
Despite recurring narratives about social media saturation, GWI data indicates that the combined time consumers spend weekly on social media and short-form video exceeds the time they spend on linear television, streaming, and radio combined. On average, it stands at around 13.5 hours per week, and for young people aged 16 to 24, it approaches 18 hours.
Scrolling to fill downtime, discover content, or avoid FOMO is gaining ground over direct interaction.
What is changing, however, is how we use them. Social networks are now less «social» in the traditional sense: we post less and consume more. Scrolling to fill downtime, discover content, or avoid FOMO is gaining ground over direct interaction. Platforms like TikTok are consolidating their position as entertainment spaces, while others maintain more functional roles, such as personal contact or image sharing.
For brands, attention is still there, but it demands content designed to capture, not interrupt. By 2026, social media will be the primary media environment where consumers’ time is contested.
Source: www.www.reasonwhy.es
