The Year of Trust & My 2026 Predictions
Marketing's back to basic, is the only way to differentiate in an over-saturated marketing landscape.
Introduction
As we look toward 2026, the hype cycle is breaking.
Trust becomes the expensive currency for marketers, brand is how you grow that currency.
As every channel is saturated and AI content has commoditized even professionally created content, we (marketers) need to find better ways to distribute our work.
High competition and AI-generated noise can only be bypassed by breaking the cycle, and producing clarity of message.
Why am I writing predictions?
Predictions are thought-exercises into the future, helping expect both opportunities and threats, both bets into the future and protecting from possible troubles.
What you will read:
The Value of Trust: Back to Basics
Where is Growth in B2B Marketing
The Future of Search - SEO Vs GEO
The Tech & Business Landscape
Bonus, a commentary of last year’s predictions, and a message from the sponsor of this newsletter.
AI search is changing the game.
Minuttia helps B2B companies dominate search—not just traditional SEO, but AI-driven discovery too.
- Develop AI + Google search strategies
- Create high-quality human and AI content
- Amplify visibility through Digital PR
- Continuously improve with agent analytics & reporting93% of our clients stick around.
If you want to win on AI search before it’s table stakes, talk to Minuttia.
1. The Value of Trust: Back to Basics
Marketing has always been a way to influence people.
In it’s purest, ethical form, marketing is communicating the value of products and services for buyers to find the right ones.
In it’s darkest, it’s manipulating psychology, maximizing profits, and “hacking” the system to promote them.
I view marketing as a communication mechanism, a way to match product and people, and the process of marketing utilizes a combination of psychology, technology, and media.
A) Positioning, Pricing, and Trust
Companies who focus on strong positioning will be the winners in 2026. The only way to differentiate in a busy world will be re-focusing on the basics.
Positioning and pricing will be the main differentiators.
Building trust with human-led content will be at the foremost.
B) Trust Channels
Companies will focus on these activities:
employees,
re-branding,
niching down,
experimenting with pricing,
And, across channels will choose to do more:
authentic video (human-led),
niche newsletters
micro-influencers, and
smaller events (dinners, unconferences, VIP events, etc.)
2. Where is Growth in B2B Marketing
The hunt for a non-saturated channel will continue, while BlueSky is an alternative to X/Twitter, and Reddit had a resurgence, they are not ideal for most companies.
Where will companies go to invest in growth?
Personal Brands
Founder-led content and employee personal brands. Elena Verna talks about the build-in-public motion of Lovable, it’s a true and tested system for high-velocity startups.
If your company does not lead with the founder, then the solution is internal subject-matter-experts and long-time employees and leaders being public about their work.
Ecosystems & Social Selling
LinkedIn is perfect for B2B and building an ecosystem of cheerleaders for your product is a great way to grow in 2026.
Airtable, AirOps, Lovable, Clay, and Attio are using social selling and ecosystems to grow their businesses.
LinkedIn Saturation
LinkedIn will also reach a saturation point, already impressions are down and bad automation is killing outreach. It’s very much alive, still, but it will become more difficult and more expensive.
3. The Future of Search - SEO Vs GEO
SEO is not dying, but probably moving from performance to brand.
With less attribution, but being essential to defend to boards and CFOs, SEO for many companies will start moving under the Brand department. Tech SEOs might be safe in engineering (still), but most of SEO & GEO work right now is taking place in Digital PR and Content.
Social Listening for SEO/GEO 🥊 Big Bet
Social listening (citations in social) will become a common feature for AIO tools. Brand monitoring is essential for LLM optimization, as SEO is going under brand, AIO tools will add social listening tools.
I expect to see a few companies restructuring under that, but they may not announce it.
4. The Tech & Business Landscape
I always love to follow business, startup, and funding news. After a 2020-2022 boom in funding, levels are falling down.
VCs were betting on AI, which kept funding there, but in a more turbulent market, there will be changes.
VC Shifts Away from AI
There will be more AI investments in the first half (H1) of 2026, but AI funding will be reduced by the second half (H2).
Money lending is becoming more expensive, and funds will prefer safer investments like bonds rather than big unicorns with unreal valuations.
Kill, Raise, & Acquisition
Let’s go big with this one, I do expect a small reckoning next year, a bigger in 2027.
Kill: Many smaller AI companies, and especially AIO Reporting tools will close, as their model is not profitable. I expect one medium to big AI company to fail spectacularly, the economy cannot support all of the foundational models & AI companies.
Raise: We will see a few big AI companies raising record amounts. Lovable’s $330 million funding is just the start. Either Anthropic or Bolt.new will raise big bucks soon.
Acquisition or Merger of OpenAI by Microsoft
OpenAI is bleeding money, and will need a very big cash infusion. Will Sam Altman may prefer an investment, I expect a bid by Microsoft to fully acquire.
It’s more probably to be a kind of merger with stocks as payments, when OpenAI will run out of money.
🥊 BIG BET: The Rise of EU Tech
As US investors grow wary of domestic risk and saturation, capital will flow across the Atlantic. We will see the emergence of big EU startups fueled by US money.
Earlier in 2025, investments were moved from the US to the EU due to uncertainty. The trend seems to be reversing, but an uncertain climate in the US and the EU investing in defense & trade (28th state) might be enough to attract more investments.
EU will be seen at the stable super-power, as long as it manages to fix some long-standing internal issues like burreacracy.
Tech will probably focus on defense rather than software. But, I expect to see some big investments in European companies.
🥊 BIG BET: Consolidations and M&As (SaaS, Agencies, and Cybersecurity)
Expect a wave of rebrands, redesigns, and redirections as companies merge. The market has become too distributed, and always after a niching down circle, we see again a wave of consolidation. This will probably last for 2-3 years and has already started.
Agencies started consolidating in 2024, and we will see more small agencies being merged or acquired by bigger ones. The market has become saturated with freelancers and new agencies after the wave of layoffs, this will be resolved by big ones acquiring the smaller ones to get either expertise or new clients.
SaaS are showing some early signs of acquisitions in 2025, but that will increase in 2026. The SaaS market has become too fragmented, and with vibe coding tools allowing people to make micro-tools, many single-feature-tools will need a new home.
Cybersecurity had a growing wave of consolidations over the past year, even the company I work at Cyberbit acquired RangeForce, one of the main competitors. Bigger companies like Google buying Wiz, Palo Alto buying Cyberark, and many more took place this year. The trend will continue as the whole industry is changing and is very fragmented.
The Job Market: Fractionals and Freelancers
Layoffs have been a theme for 2-3 years. AI and RTO (return to the office) have been the greatest excuses to fire people, while re-hiring cheaper staff to fill in.
We will see many more people adopting the title of “Fractional” as long-time full-time employees move to freelancing.
Fractional CMOs, CFOs, and CTOs are on the rise.
Looking Back to 2025’s Predictions
Taking a look back at my 2025 predictions, I was more or less on target. This year, I am going a big more vague on what is happening.
Read my evaluation:
Evaluating my predictions here.
