Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2026. Read them in this 18th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Alex Halliday, Co-founder and CEO of AirOps
AI is reshaping not just how content is created, but how it is discovered, trusted, and acted on. As search moves beyond Google and into AI-native platforms, companies will need stronger judgment, better content, and new ways of showing up at the moments that matter most in 2026.
Below are the trends I already see emerging now, and what I believe will define 2026 and beyond.
Taste and care for craft will become the most sought after qualities in employees: AI has made it easy to create almost anything. What’s hard now is knowing what’s actually good. Having taste and discernment about when something feels right, when it’s off, and when to leave it alone is what will separate great operators from average ones. The companies that protect taste as they scale will be the ones people keep coming back to.
SEO budgets will expand to now include AI-driven discovery: More brands will start moving their SEO budgets toward the places people are actually starting to search more, like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Ranking on Google will increasingly become less of an advantage if brands are invisible in AI platforms, and the most successful teams will learn how to make their content easy for these systems to understand and surface. Being the first answer will matter more than being on the first page.
The AI search gap will widen: As more people turn to AI interfaces to find information, the gap between brands that invested in this shift and those that didn’t will become increasingly clear. The early adopters will reach customers at the exact points where decisions get made, when they’re looking for reliable answers, comparing products, and forming opinions about what to trust. Their content will be referenced, surfaced, and shared across these systems, creating momentum over time. The rest won’t disappear overnight, but they’ll start to notice significantly smaller returns from the same amount of effort.
ChatGPT will launch ads and a new ad-free paid tier: We expect OpenAI to launch ads in 1H 2026 along with a higher-priced, ad-free premium tier. This will disrupt existing marketing budgets and create two new channels we need to master. ChatGPT Ads will become a major arena for performance testing and optimization. “VIP SEO” will emerge inside the ad-free product, giving us access to a high-earning, highly engaged segment of ChatGPT power users who cannot be reached through ads.
Brands will need to treat content as their main lever if they want to win in the new AI world: That means understanding how these premium users behave and influencing them with high-quality, personalized content that supports complex, high-consideration decisions. Many of these users will be B2B buyers, so approaches will often resemble ABM campaigns traditionally reserved for B2B. Offsite influence will also grow in importance, creating a behind-the-scenes ecosystem for placing content where it matters most. As this happens, content quality and content measurement will become key, and our attribution systems will need to evolve to capture the real impact of our investments.
Looking Ahead to the Next Year
Looking ahead, the advantage will go to teams that combine taste with strategy, invest early in AI-driven discovery, and treat content as a long-term lever rather than a short-term tactic. As AI platforms become a primary place where people form opinions and make decisions, the brands that endure will be the ones that show up consistently with clarity, credibility, and restraint at exactly the right moments.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alex Halliday is the founder and CEO of AirOps, a platform that helps brands drive organic growth through AI-powered content strategies. Before starting AirOps, Alex worked at Teespring, Masterclass, and Bungalow, building product expertise that informed his approach to AI workflow design.
