CMOs face a make-or-break moment as digital channels and personalization collapse

Two pillars of modern marketing—digital channels and personalized engagement—are falling apart and CMOs must do a radical rethink to survive, according to a new Gartner report.

“The foundations CMOs once relied on are eroding fast, from how teams operate to how

brands earn trust and drive growth,” Sharon Cantor Ceurvorst and Ewan McIntyre write in Leadership Vision for 2026: Chief Marketing Officer.” “In 2026, CMOs face a pivotal choice: Bolt AI onto legacy systems and risk irrelevance, or embrace the opportunity to build what comes next.”

These developments are the result of changes in trust, customer behavior and operational dynamics. At the same time, AI, cross-functional collaboration and market volatility, mean marketing is taking on more responsibility with no new resources.

Crisis 1: The zero-based channel shock

At the heart of the first crisis is what Gartner calls “the zero-based channel shock.” The finding is counterintuitive: the most heavily used and most historically effective digital channels are now the least stable.

Channels like search, display and social—cornerstones of modern marketing investment—are facing accelerating obsolescence. This is due in part to how generative AI is fundamentally altering how customers search for information, discover brands and make decisions. What’s replacing the human-driven marketing journey is an “agentic” one—where AI-powered tools perform tasks on behalf of customers, mediating their exposure to brands.

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This shift challenges not only channel tactics, but the logic of decades of marketing strategy. “The digital channels most at risk from AI disruption are the ones with the highest historical spend and impact,” the authors write. As a result, CMOs must now rebuild their channel strategies from scratch, using a “zero-based” approach that does not assume the past predicts the future.

Rather than doubling down on increasingly saturated channels, CMOs need to reorient their efforts toward where discovery happens now—AI-powered tools, recommendation engines and ecosystems where human attention is fragmented and filtered through machine logic. The report states: “CMOs must shed legacy assumptions and reorient around rapidly evolving, AI-driven buying journeys.”

In this new environment, marketing success will depend less on channel dominance and more on adaptability, experimentation and trust-building at machine-mediated touchpoints.

Crisis 2: Personalization Is backfiring

The second crisis strikes at the heart of marketing’s value proposition: delivering relevant, personalized experiences. After years of investing in MarTech platforms, CDPs and data-driven personalization strategies, CMOs are now facing a sobering realization—personalization, as currently executed, is not working.

Worse, it’s eroding customer trust.

According to Gartner’s research, customers who experienced personalized interactions were:

• 3.2x more likely to regret a purchase,
• 2x more likely to feel overwhelmed by information,
• 1.7x more likely to delay making important decisions.

This finding runs counter to industry orthodoxy. For years, marketers have claimed that deeper personalization would increase engagement, satisfaction and loyalty. Instead, Gartner reveals a personalization paradox: the more brands try to simulate intimacy with algorithms, the more they risk alienating customers.

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“AI can fake intimacy—but it can’t earn trust,” the report states. What’s needed now is not more sophisticated targeting or automation, but a rehumanization of personalization—grounded in empathy, transparency and clarity of purpose.

Gartner recommends a strategic pivot: CMOs should design “dual customer journeys”—one that influences the AI systems customers use (such as voice assistants and recommendation engines) and another that engages the human evaluating the outcome. In this model, AI becomes an interpreter of value, not a replacement for authentic connection.

To move forward, marketers must recognize that trust is not a data artifact; it is a fundamental aspect of human interaction. It’s earned through meaningful experiences, relevant context and human consistency.

Don’t bolt AI onto legacy thinking

These twin crises are symptoms of a deeper issue: the persistent urge to retrofit AI onto outdated marketing strategies. Gartner’s overarching message is clear—AI can’t be treated as a plug-in. It demands a rearchitecture of marketing operations, talent and culture.

This begins with leadership. Future-forward CMOs, the report argues, will lead through strategic insight rather than operational execution. They will guide their organizations in building “AI-powered marketing organizations” with new operating models, hybrid human-agent teams and AI-native processes that create value through differentiation—not just scale.

Crucially, this evolution also calls for a new internal narrative. As AI-generated content floods every touchpoint, CMOs must ensure their brand’s voice rises above the noise. Gartner warns that AI, if poorly applied, risks creating “a competitive sea of sameness.” CMOs must resist the allure of generic efficiency and instead use AI to amplify distinctiveness, creativity and customer-centric innovation.

The path ahead

The message for CMOs is as urgent as it is nuanced. Doing nothing is not an option. Bolting AI onto outdated channel plans and failed personalization tactics will only accelerate irrelevance. However, a strategic, human-first approach to AI offers the opportunity to build what’s next.

To get there, CMOs must:

• Rethink channel strategy from the ground up.
• Redefine personalization to emphasize empathy over automation.
• Build organizations designed to thrive in an AI-mediated world.
• Use AI to enhance—not erase—the brand’s unique voice.
• Lead with strategic clarity in a time of disruption.

AI may be reshaping the landscape, but the opportunity remains for CMOs to lead—not react to—the future. The key is to stop playing defense with legacy tools and start designing a marketing function built for the reality of 2026 and beyond.

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