As 2025 closes out, Juan and Jacqueline team up with Keanu Taylor, The Martech Weekly's Head of Research, to read the tea leaves on what 2026 has in store for marketing technology.

Their forecast is a "make or break" year in which the winners won't be the loudest early adopters, but the teams whose data and operating habits are clean enough for AI actually to stick. Keanu predicts a sharper split between the AI "haves" and "have-nots," with organizational readiness acting like gravity on every agent, model, and workflow.

The bet: 2026 will expose which stacks are built for decisions, not demos — and which ones were never ready for either.

Timestamps

01:08 ExactTarget's 25th Birthday/Anniversary

03:54 Prediction 1: AI Agent Adoption and Readiness

10:35 Prediction 2: The Rise of AI Decisioning Silos

21:48 Prediction 3: CDP and CEP/ESP Stack Consolidation

Brought to you by Hightouch - the leading composable CDP and decisioning platform trusted by brands like Domino's, Chime, and Aritzia. 90% of customers have a real use case live within their first week, delivering world-class personalization at scale. Learn more at www.hightouch.com/msom.

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