Beyond the AI Noise: Three MarTech Shifts That Matter for 2026
destination CRM, Wednesday, December 17th, 2025
Unless you've been living on a desert island with no Wi-Fi, you know that in 2025 marketing was dominated by talk of AI. So instead of more predictions about generative or agentic AI, let's look at three trends that will matter just as much in 2026.
Fractals Will Define the Future of Marketing
The marketing funnel is dead-not dying, not evolving, but dead. And every day you cling to it, you're losing ground.
For decades, marketers have clung to funnels as a comforting fiction: awareness, consideration, conversion. It's tidy, easy to explain, and utterly disconnected from how people actually behave. No customer moves neatly through those stages.
Real customer journeys are chaotic. They scroll TikTok while half-reading reviews, abandon carts for weeks, then buy after a friend's comment. They loop, pause, re-enter, and skip channels entirely. Funnels don't capture that reality-they simplify it out of existence.