FORJ Forward: What our team is looking forward to across digital marketing in 2026

2025: A landmark year for FORJ Digital and the industry

2025 has been a year of massive acceleration in the digital marketing world, dominated by AI integration and a fundamental shift in how consumers interact with search and content. At FORJ Digital, it was a landmark year where we not only navigated these changes but truly leveraged them to deliver exceptional results for our clients.

Key Industry Developments:

• AI becoming mainstream: moving beyond simple content generation to full automation, data analysis, and predictive marketing.

• Search Evolution (SGE/AI Overviews): The shift from traditional keyword-based SEO to a new landscape where AI answers and summarises content, referred to as Generative Engine Optimisation or GEO.

• First-Party Data and Privacy: The continued phase-out of third-party cookies, making first-party data strategies and transparency non-negotiable.

• Short-Form Video & Social Commerce: The dominance of short-form video (Reels, Shorts, TikTok) and the further integration of e-commerce directly into social platforms.

• Agentic Commerce & Zero-Click Experiences: The rise of AI-driven, self-directed purchasing journeys reduces traditional click-throughs, making optimisation of the entire customer experience, including interactions beyond the website, critical for revenue efficiency.

Our 2026 digital marketing predictions

As we enter 2026, the pace of innovation isn't slowing. We asked our team what they’re most excited about, and predicting, for the year ahead. Their insights paint a picture of a more human, hyper-personalised, and creatively autonomous digital future.

Katie Faulkner, Optimisation Strategist

The rise of AI-driven 'agentic commerce' and the 'zero-click' reality fundamentally changes CRO's role. In a world of spiking acquisition costs, CRO elevates from being a simple website improvement tool to a primary financial efficiency lever, the discipline responsible for maximising profit from existing traffic.

Prediction: CRO will evolve into an efficiency orchestration discipline, moving beyond the website to validate and maximise the financial return of more customer touchpoints, directly impacting Revenue Per Visitor (RPV).

This necessitates three crucial shifts:

• Financial Alliance with Paid Media: CRO acts as the ultimate efficiency consultant, scientifically validating landing page and creative performance to maximise ROAS and optimise the vital LTV:CAC ratio.

• Mastering the Attribution Gap: As AI overviews influence purchase decisions, we shift toward influence-based attribution, using CRO's data rigour to measure signals like citation rate and branded search spikes.

• Building Algorithmic Trust: CRO is responsible for establishing algorithmic trust by advising on the technical fluency and authority of content, ensuring high-intent traffic is channelled efficiently to the conversion path.

Jon Crowe, Founder - Paid Media

If 2025 was the year SEO really came to terms with zero-click search, I think 2026 is when Paid Media will start to get its hands on new opportunities inside the LLM platforms.

The last year has felt like a transition phase. Attention is clearly shifting to tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, and historically, where audiences go, advertising tends to follow.

What I’m genuinely excited about is what comes next. Ads in these environments won’t look like keywords or banners. They’re more likely to appear as suggested sources, follow-ups, or recommendations at the moment someone is actually deciding what to do next.

That’s a big shift for Paid Media. In Paid Search, we’ve always tried to infer intent from a short query. Conversational prompts in AI platforms offer something very different – rich context, clearer intent, and a level of relevance beyond what we’ve ever really had in search.

2026 probably won’t have all the answers, but it feels like the year this starts to matter in a meaningful way.

Sophie Mullard, Paid Media Account Director

For too long, Paid Search and Paid Social have operated in silos, but 2026 will demand a truly holistic strategy for brands seeking sustainable growth. 

The user journey is no longer linear; a consumer might discover a brand on Instagram and convert via Google Shopping hours later. 

My prediction is that AI will be the engine that finally unifies these channels. It won’t replace the human strategist, but it will handle the complexity, identifying cross-channel intent signals and optimising budget allocation in real time. 

This frees up the human team to focus on the high-level creative storytelling and unique value proposition that only a person can bring, ensuring AI drives efficiency, while the human touch drives brand differentiation. It’s a strategic lever that’s going to be paramount with the new world of Meta’s Andromeda and Google continuing to push visual formats such as Performance Max and Demand Gen. 

Chris Ford, Founder - Data & Analytics

We have always known that data quality is important, but in 2026, it’s no longer just important… it’s survival. As AI weaves itself into every digital activity, the 'garbage in, garbage out' rule applies more than ever. 

Your data quality is now your single biggest competitive advantage. Why? Because AI is useless without a clean fuel source. The marketers who win will be the ones feeding their digital ecosystem with high-fidelity, consented, real-time data. That is the only way to power privacy-safe methods, like real-time marketing mix modelling. This process keeps you agile and accurate even as the third-party cookie finally fades away.

Looking ahead

The digital marketing landscape of 2026 promises a shift toward deeper, more meaningful engagement powered by sophisticated technology. At FORJ Digital, we are ready to turn these trends into competitive advantages for our partners.