In the New Era of AI, You Need to Win Over Both Humans and Agents

For the last decade-plus, marketing followed a simple, loud rule: broadcast. We pushed messages out, optimized for clicks and hoped our voice was convincing enough to persuade people to take the next step. News flash: That era is officially over. 

We are at a massive turning point where the monologue of brand messaging is being replaced by sophisticated, two-way conversations driven by agentic AI. The most successful brands won’t be the ones with the loudest “microphones”. They’ll be the ones that are able to get their data foundations strong enough to create content that can interact with both humans and agents (more on that later).

According to our Tenth Edition State of Marketing report, 83% of marketers agree that customers increasingly want two-way conversations, not just one-way messages. However, 69% of marketers say they struggle to respond promptly to customer and prospect inquiries. Solving this will be the key to success over the next 12 months.

On that note, here are four thoughts on what marketers should expect as agentic marketing innovation evolves in the year ahead.

1. Don’t underestimate the emergence of agents

Here’s a stat that should wake every marketer up: 51% of web traffic is coming from bots, not people. Brands are also seeing increased traffic from AI agents as people are using agents as proxies to do research for them. The agents are pinging the websites and trying to gather information and pull it back. This is happening in both B2C and B2B business.

By later this year, a huge chunk of your “customers” will be digital proxies like Gemini or ChatGPT doing the research for their humans. This means our innovation shouldn’t just be about making pretty websites. It’s about making your data agent-ready. If your brand information isn’t easily accessible and linkable for autonomous agents, you’re essentially invisible to the people who use them.

Your tools and your business data – both structured and unstructured – needs to be in order to provide for LLMs to prioritize how your brand shows up in consumer searches. Gartner predicts that 60% of brands will use agentic AI for customer interactions. It’s crucial that you prepare for this shift now.

2. Brands must accept that the era of one-way brand messages is over

Many consumers are already relying on agents to research products and services. A lot of them are saying, “Hey, why do I need to go to a website anymore? I have this agent that does the research for me and gives me these interesting outcomes.” 

Still, I don’t think we’re going to see a landslide shift over to people only using agents. They need to have that brand experience. Agentic capabilities are amping up customer expectations, and that’s driving change because they’re making marketers think, Is my website good enough anymore? Is my email good enough anymore? Are any of the communications good enough?

The answer to those questions is no, because most brands are still offering a one-way broadcast messaging experience that’s trying to convince a person to click and learn more. Consumers now expect an agent to do that work for them, so why should they bother clicking? Ultimately brands will have to change their interfaces to be more agentic, beautiful and immersive. 

In our Agentforce Marketing Cloud Spring ‘26 Release, we added Conversational Email, in which an agent can handle product, returns or even service questions. We have also added Multi-touch Attribution – new dashboards that show exactly which engagements drove revenue for your company.

With agentic AI, your marketing can no longer just be a call to action. It should be the start of a conversation on every channel. And those conversations should lead to customers taking steps forward with your brand.

3. The dream of hyper-personalization will finally be actualized 

For years, we’ve been chasing a “360-degree view” of the customer. We’ve finally bridged the silos between marketing, sales and service using unified foundations like Data 360. This is huge because AI agents depend on good data to do their job. Without that, nothing will work.

Now in 2026, the innovation is hyper-personalization. In the past, we were limited by how much content humans could create. But with LLMs generating layouts, descriptions and templates on the fly, the “impossible” is now possible. We aren’t just guessing what a customer wants based on a segment. We are reacting to their real-time intent. We are evolving from being “technicians” to being “orchestrators.”

4. Apathy is the biggest threat facing brands

The marketing world is changing faster than ever. We’re seeing it unfold in front of our eyes, and we also have to react in real time. If you’re a brand waiting to see how this plays out, you’re already behind. Marketers need to keep innovating while also delivering. Focus on the outcomes, get your data in order and start building for a world where every customer interaction is an avenue for a two-way conversation.

It’s a mistake for any company to wait and see what happens with agents. The development is going to continue. We’re going to see more and more agents performing actions on behalf of individuals. Brands need to think about how they can create a beautiful, immersive experience that’s in harmony with agents. That’s what people are looking for. 

Build it, and you’ll be a step ahead of the competition – and you’ll give customers the audience they want and expect.