The Marketer of 2026.

Marketers have made AI part of the daily job, but only a quarter say they understand their audience "very well". That gap runs through The Marketer of 2026, a report Brandwatch published on 16 March 2026.

Brandwatch surveyed 1,028 marketers and combined their answers with 750,000 online conversations about marketing, collected with its Brandwatch Consumer Research tool between 1 January 2025 and 31 January 2026. The report gives no country breakdown and no fieldwork dates for the survey.

The job is shifting to interpretation

• 79% spend more time managing AI and automation.
• 51% are more focused on data analysis and interpretation.
• 44% are increasingly responsible for showing measurable results.
• Nearly 60% spend less time on traditional advertising, and almost half say the same of email marketing.

Brandwatch reads this as a shift of effort rather than a retreat: marketers are now expected to explain why something worked, not just report that it did.

Audiences are the hardest part

Most marketers don't lack data. What they say they lack is a clear read of why people behave as they do, and the challenges they name are mostly about the reasons behind behaviour.

AI is the skill, and the risk

81% call AI tools the most essential part of a marketer's toolkit, well ahead of content creation tools (58%), analytics platforms (52%), video creation and editing tools (47%) and social listening tools (46%). Posts about AI in marketing subreddits rose 85%, from about 16,900 to 31,250, in the second half of 2025 compared with the first half, and the main theme was efficiency.

Some respondents warn about "AI slop", machine-made content that all looks the same. The report quotes Ghassan Kassabji, chief executive of Impact BBDO in Dubai: "AI and automation will handle the scale, but cross-platform content optimization and brand management will define the soul."

What it means for marketers

Brandwatch sells social listening and consumer intelligence software, and its advice to connect data sources and invest in listening matches what it sells. The survey also has no regional results, so read it as a global benchmark rather than a picture of the Gulf.

The core finding still travels. Most teams now have the AI tools; far fewer have a clear view of why their audience behaves as it does. In the Gulf that means listening in Arabic as well as English, and on the platforms where local audiences actually talk.

The skills list doubles as a hiring and training checklist: AI fluency first, then the ability to read data and explain it, with content and listening skills close behind.

Sources

• Brandwatch, "The Marketer of 2026" (16 March 2026)