Falak’s takeaways from Technology for Marketing 2026

This year’s focus was heavily on AI, and it was one of the main reasons we attended, to make sure we get a head start on upcoming trends. We know it’s here and it’s not moving. Here are the main things we picked up on as a marketing agency:

1. It’s tough for marketing out there.

The industry has evolved leaps and bounds and is so different from what it was even a mere five years ago. The main lesson being gleaned? You need to find a way to utilise AI and make it work for you.

We’re still, thankfully, far from the point where AI has completely replaced marketing and businesses can just crack on without it. Newsflash: your AI-created poster is recognisable! We can tell you’re mocking up those long captions using AI too. (Hint hint: the perfect, formulaic response is not human!)

AI is here to stay, so it’s about figuring out how to use it to your advantage without losing the creativity and personality that make good marketing work.

2. 50–60% of the ‘new internet’ is filled with bots.

One of the more surprising statistics shared during Optimizely’s ‘Beyond the Model: What Makes AI Work for Marketing’ panel was a finding from Cloudflare’s Radar dashboard: bots now make up more online traffic than humans (you can see the current numbers here).

That’s a pretty big shift when you think about it. Gone are the days where content is tailored just for human eyes. There’s now a growing focus on making sure content is also relevant to what these bots are searching for, reading and interpreting.

More and more people are using AI and other tools to do away with the banality of menial tasks. Personally, we’ve seen it first-hand with Ticketmaster… and the lack of affordable tickets (!). 

The way people search, find information and make decisions is changing, and businesses need to think about how their content is being discovered beyond the traditional search engine.

If AI is increasingly becoming part of how people discover information, businesses need to make sure their content can be found and understood there too.

3. Data is great, but for your typical business, how is this actually helping?

High impressions and views don’t matter much in the long term if they aren’t telling you anything useful. It’s important to find out what is actually driving repeat business and follow those patterns.

It’s very easy to get caught up in the numbers because they’re right there in front of you. But what do those numbers actually mean for your business? A post getting 10,000 views might look great, but if the post that got 500 views brought in three new clients, which one actually mattered more?

4. The future of AI is not bleak.

This was another theme that came up across the panels, but particularly in the ‘Smart Communities: Using AI to Turn B2B Engagement into Growth’ panel. Despite everything we have heard about AI, one thing is clear – people still need that human touch.

Connection like that is not something AI can replicate. There’s a difference when people have heart when it comes to business, particularly when it comes to building relationships and engaging with other people.

Something that was encouraged was taking a step back and looking at how, from your human side, you can approach a task differently from competitors who, for instance, rely solely on AI.

And that’s perhaps where AI gets interesting. If everyone has access to the same tools, the thing that makes your business stand out may not be the technology itself, but what you bring to it.

AI can help make things quicker, but it doesn’t mean everything needs to be done by AI. Sometimes the human approach is exactly what makes something stand out.

5. Consumers have changed. Your online presence needs to reflect this.

In this day and age, having a lack of presence online could be detrimental to your business. As younger generations come in, the need for a history online will become increasingly important.

If a business is excellent in person but lacking online, you’re really missing out on your time to shine when other, well-established businesses are paying for that presence.

People will search for you before they speak to you. They’ll look at your website, your social media and what else they can find about you online. If there’s nothing there, or what is there doesn’t reflect the business they’d experience in person, you could be missing an opportunity before the conversation has even started.

And this applies to businesses and public figures more and more too. 50 years from now, the Prime Minister didn’t have social media!? Suspicious…..

We’re only half joking.

So, what did we take away?

Well, that sums it up. Mainly: ‘The future is here now, old man!’

We’re joking but it was really insightful to attend this conference and get a look at what’s happening in the industry. The ups and downs, the changes coming our way and what this all means for the future of marketing.

One thing is for certain: we’re human, we’re here and we can help you.

Social media? We got you.

Brand presence? Hello!

Get in contact and see how 2Bees Marketing can help with your marketing needs.