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Drivers of Growth 2026 uncovers the strategies, technologies, and investments CMOs are prioritising to drive sustainable brand growth.
In its 6th edition, the report explores the key trends shaping how brands and CMOs are planning for growth in the year ahead.
Based on insights from 80+ CMOs across industries, it highlights how organisations are adapting to AI-driven marketing, shifting consumer behaviour, and data-led decision making. The findings reveal the strategies, technologies, and investment priorities shaping the next phase of marketing growth.
About Tyroo
Growth Without Borders Powering Global Digital Expansion
When growth ambitions meet complex markets, the right partner makes the difference.
Tyroo is a global monetisation and growth platform that helps advertisers, publishers, and digital platforms expand into new markets with speed and confidence. By combining deep local expertise, advanced technology, and strategic partnerships, we help businesses unlock new audiences, accelerate revenue, and drive sustainable digital growth across high-potential regions.
We are more than a distribution partner – we are a strategic bridge between global technology and local market opportunity.
Here’s how Tyroo helps businesses grow beyond borders:
- Enabling global market entry with deep regional expertise in emerging digital economies across APAC
- Localising global platforms with market-specific strategy, partnerships, and operational support
- Driving scalable growth through technology innovation, performance marketing, and ecosystem collaboration
01. Agents of change: from attention to intention
2026 will see the emergence of Al agents at scale. As consumers, we will brief our own agents, expressing our intent for mascara or an entertainment service. And these agents will become more autonomous as cryptocurrencies are built in. Kantar’s Blueprint for Brand Growth’ proves that to grow, brands need to predispose more people. But now, they need to predispose agents too.
OpenAl’s announcement that their new browser will incorporate Al agents signals a shift in consumer behaviour. With 24% of Al users already using an Al shopping assistant (Kantar’s Connecting with the Al consumer report), delegated purchase support is already the norm.
CMOs will need their brands (and their agents) to actively service these non-human consumers, while continuing to persuade and entertain humans through traditional attention-seeking channels. Product features, service details, guides, experiences and content will need to be widely findable. Marketers will need to understand the role that empathy and emotion can play in agentic transactions.
Brands that accelerate their Al visibility strategy in 2026 will be better placed to drive growth.
Jane Ostler
Chief Insights Officer
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02. Brand building with Al: human connection through machine selection
Next year, purchase decisions will be increasingly mediated by Generative Al and agents, who will recommend brands and their content. But (for now) technology doesn’t buy things, people do. So, the CMO’s job is to build brands that people love, and to be more present so that models prioritise their brands.
Salience alone won’t make you algorithmically preferred. Three- quarters (74%) of those who use Al assistants (Kantar’s Connecting with the Al consumer report) regularly seek out Al-driven recommendations. Enter Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), the new SEO. GEO gets your brand cited and trusted by LLMs. If the model doesn’t know you, it won’t choose you, so prepare to create clear, structured, machine-legible and relevant content. Models must be primed with the meaning of your brand and what you offer (e.g. recipes, how-to content).
The strongest brands will be those that shape the story Al is telling. Brands that fail to differentiate risk being lost in a sea of sameness – if you’re not the default recommendation, you’ll be optimised out.
Jane Ostler
Chief Insights Officer
03. Synthetic data, augmented audiences
Augmenting audiences with Al will deepen marketers’ understanding so they can strategise more effectively. Use of synthetic data requires a balance of speed, scale, and accuracy. However, algorithms vary significantly depending on the dataset and the scenario. Our own synthetic data boosting delivers 94-95% accuracy versus the ground truth’
As technologies like digital twins (digital versions of real products or people) evolve, expect clearer guardrails and use cases, and the rapid integration of text, voice, image and VR. Generative Al will enhance how we visualise insights and integrate with LLM search.
Is the industry ready for this? Not fully. Responsible data, rigorous testing, new skills, and the technology and infrastructure to scale are musts.
Marketers are moving beyond synthetic hype to practical execution in 2026; brands will need to develop internal capabilities, make informed trade-offs and work with trusted data partners to get ahead.
Cynthia Vega
Global Al & Analytics Director
04. Iransform creative optimisation into creative intelligence with Al
If you’re one of the majority of marketers excited about Generative Al (Kantar’s Media Reactions”), the next step is using it where it counts. For creative content, that means systematically adopting Al-powered evaluation techniques to predict which ads will capture attention, stir emotions, and affect purchase intent and long-term brand equity.
As Al-assisted testing becomes faster, more accurate and widely used, marketers will be able to test ads in real time. In 2026, agentic optimisation recommendations will give marketers the power to fine- tune campaigns dynamically, based on what’s worked before, what’s trending now and audience responses. Human insight will be just as essential to tell your brand’s story authentically.
In 2026 there will be a focus on the quality of training datasets for the Al-based tools that make automated decisions, to ensure that the insights are robust and trustworthy. CMOs need to test and learn now, to ensure that creative effectiveness drives brand growth.
Duncan Southgate
Global Creative and Media Lead
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05. Treatonomics: enjoying every day
Treatonomics, aka ‘little treat culture’, has emerged as an antidote to economic volatility and a fundamental change in life’s milestones. With marriage, parenthood and home ownership increasingly out of reach or undesirable, treatonomics is about injecting optimism and control through small pleasures. In fact, 36% of consumers are prepared to go into short-term debt to spend on things they enjoy (Kantar’s Global MONITOR ).
People are now marking ‘inchstones’ just to have something to celebrate. It’s the lipstick effect on steroids. Attended a divorce party? Bought yourself a diamond for a job rejection? You’re on trend. Social media’s pivot to commerce, where demand is created and fulfilled in seconds, is keeping treatonomics alive. With economic uncertainty still ongoing, the trend will likely persist into 2026.
But trends are moving faster, and are fragmenting by geographical and cultural niches, so brands need to work hard to stay at the front of the race.
CMOs need to ask if their brands are meeting consumers where they are, by creating joy in the everyday.
Bia Bezamat
Associate Director, Consulting
06. Experiment to accelerate: innovation as an engine for growth
Innovation is a proven multiplier. Over the past 20 years, brands willing to disrupt themselves or their category (the Apples, Amazons and Googles) created $6.6 trillion in value (Kantar’s BrandZ).
Yet many businesses stumble when it’s time to take a risk. With disruption all around us, playing safe can feel tempting – but it’s at the expense of future growth.
In 2026, short-termism won’t be enough. Brands that make experimentation their default will grow and shape the future. Smart risk-taking thrives in cultures where teams have permission to push boundaries, exploration is structured, and experimentation is rewarded.
Crucially, innovation must be brand-led, not tech-led, rooted in what a brand stands tor and in consumer motivations and tensions. With the advent of widely used Al tools, CMOs face a new imperative: ensure innovation brings a brand’s meaningful difference to life, rather than chasing technology.
Brands that make experimentation their default in 2026 will grow and shape the future. Does your culture reward smart risk-taking? After all, the biggest risk is still not taking one.
Dr. Nicki Morley
Global Innovation Lead
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07. Brands at the crossroads: authentic inclusion drives growth
In 2026 marketers should double down on inclusive innovation, culturally fluent programmes, and authentic representation on both sides of the camera.
Valeria Piaggio
Global Leader, Kantar Inclusive Growth, Sustainable Transformation Practice
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08. Unlocking retail's media potential: growth through collaboration
With over 200 Retail Media Networks (RMNs) and counting’, the channel is becoming central to reaching shoppers online and in-store. This networked approach has given media owners unprecedented control and influence on purchase decisions at multiple stages.
RMNs are high-performing: 1.8x better results than digital ads, and nearly 3x better results for purchase intent, according to Kantar LIFT data. No wonder a net 35% of marketers plan to increase RMN investment in 2026 (Kantar’s Media Reactions”), which should be a rallying cry for media owners to provide advertisers with greater transparency and more straightforward ROI measurement.
Look out for shoppable ads on CTV and streamers to go mainstream next year – a major moment in reshaping the way people discover, interact, and buy products.
Brands and retailers will need to collaborate closely in 2026 to create consumer-focused advertising, with success hinging on data integration from different retail touchpoints.
Nicole Jones
Chief Media Commercial Lead
09. Creators need to earn their place at the marketing effectiveness table
CMOs must set clear guardrails for creator content, solidify and share success metrics, then let creators do what they do best – in ways that manifest the brand’s meaningful difference.
Věra Sídlová
Global Thought Leader, Creative
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10. Micro-communities become a major force in social media marketing
Algorithmic feeds reward generic, sales-heavy content. Organic reach for branded pages keeps sliding, making broad engagement less effective and more expensive. Faced with crowded and impersonal spaces, people are moving towards micro-communities where they talk and belong in more meaningful ways.
Here, authenticity and relevance drive more engagement than reach, and brands win by showing up with tangible value (not promotion), and consistently and authentically engaging with people’s interests. It’s about building with audiences, often by collaborating with credible creators.
In China, where many social trends originate, brands using knowledge-sharing micro-community platforms achieved a 25% higher marketing ROI (Kantar LIFT ROI database”). And nearly 40% of consumers trust micro-community recommendations as much as personal ones, a strong sign of these networks’ peer-to-peer credibility.
In 2026, marketers will need to pay close attention to ROl through authentic engagement and organic advocacy in micro- communities.
Chirantan Ray
Chief Operating Officer, Greater China
