Magda Paslaru

expert panel

Increasingly strict data usage and privacy regulations have expanded protections for consumers. But for marketing teams and agencies, they’ve rewritten the digital advertising playbook. The ad industry has scrambled to adapt by reworking ad spend, retraining teams and investing in first-party datasets. However, a significant challenge still remains: “Show us the ROI” conversations with C-suites and clients are more difficult than ever.  Third-party cookies are fading, consent banners are everywhere, and platforms keep tightening what can be tracked. With limited access to consumer data, proving performance with concise, data-driven attribution reports is neither as easy nor as reliable as it used to be. When you can’t follow every user breadcrumb, you need a smarter way to connect marketing activity to business outcomes that clients actually care about. So what replaces the old playbook now that the days of detailed digital dashboards are over? In today’s marketplace, the strongest strategies blend tighter targeting, bottom-line proof points and carefully crafted conversations. Below, members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank share what’s working for them as they seek to pinpoint and prove the ROI of their digital marketing.

expert panel

Personalization was intended to be the “concierge” of digital marketing: a helpful nudge, a timely reminder or a suggested shortcut that made a customer feel understood. Somewhere along the way, however, personalized marketing started feeling more like a carnival barker with a confetti cannon—loud, distracting and relentless, as well as oddly confident about what you “must” want to see next. And all those sights and sounds aren’t just overwhelming; they’re often off-kilter and off-putting. In one survey, two-thirds of global consumers reported being targeted by inaccurate or invasive marketing. Now, Gartner’s November 2025 report, “Leadership Vision for 2026: Chief Marketing Officer,” adds a sharper warning: Overly aggressive, algorithm-driven personalization can actively weaken trust and leave consumers feeling overwhelmed with information and hesitant or regretful about making purchases. Even so, abandoning personalization altogether isn’t the answer; the majority of consumers still expect personalized interactions and are frustrated if they don’t receive them.  So what does “better personalization” look like in 2026, and how can CMOs make customers feel seen, not herded? Below, members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank share their takeaways from the Gartner report as well as practical strategies to help marketing teams produce personalized messaging that’s compelling rather than creepy. 

expert panel

CMOs accustomed to a focus on crafting polished brand messages for their own websites and traditional search are waking up to a new digital marketplace. Increasingly, buyers aren’t clicking links on search pages—they’re going to AI assistants to do work-related research, get detailed answers to personal questions, find product recommendations and even manage shopping lists. Brands can no longer rely solely on Google rankings—they need to show up in the AI-generated summaries people read, quote and act on. While a November 2025 Semrush report noted that ChatGPT is citing Reddit and Wikipedia less frequently than it has in the past, they’re still among its top three sources—a signal that “useful” content in the GenAI era often looks less like a polished campaign page and more like a living knowledge base. Companies are responding in a shift that’s been framed as a move toward generative engine optimization (GEO), where visibility increasingly depends on whether your expertise is shared in such a way that it answers real questions and can be pulled, summarized and trusted in AI-driven results.  So what new strategies should marketing leaders pursue in the face of these changes? Here, members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank—experts in brand storytelling, digital advertising, customer engagement and the rise of AI in marketing—share what these citation patterns suggest about the content AI models treat as credible and offer practical ways to rethink content and engagement.

expert panel

Now that Google is indexing Instagram content, the borders between social and search have been redrawn, turning visually led, storytelling-driven posts into searchable assets. What once existed solely within a brand’s Instagram feed can now appear alongside its most curated web pages, turning an educational carousel or a simple Reel into a potential driver of search discovery. This shift arrives as search behavior continues to transform. A 2024 Statista survey found that 46% of Gen Z respondents prefer social media to search engines to find information, showing that social content increasingly informs which products and services younger consumers find, trust and eventually buy. When Instagram posts meet users at the exact moment of intent, they become more than engagement drivers; they become micro-landing pages capable of pulling new audiences into your ecosystem. Even so, opportunity comes with strategic challenges. Optimize too lightly, and you miss the visibility gains. Optimize too aggressively, and you risk watering down the creativity and authenticity that makes social content worth engaging with in the first place. Here, members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank explore how brands can navigate this new search-social convergence, sharing their insights to help marketing teams rethink their approach to Instagram content.

expert panel

As bot networks swell and AI tools pump out endless content, it can be hard to separate genuine human input from digital noise in the bustling online marketplace. From fake followers to bot-created faux outrage campaigns, gauging whether your brand is sparking real connection or just attracting automated cheers (or jeers) has become a high-stakes challenge. It’s estimated that bots account for more than 50% of internet traffic—and they’re skewing marketing metrics in their wake. For marketing leaders, this distortion can create dangerous illusions. Dashboards can look healthy—even impressive—but surface-level performance numbers can mask genuine audience behavior, and relying on them can send teams chasing the wrong strategies, the wrong channels and the wrong assumptions about what’s working. Members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank emphasize that in a landscape where metrics can be manufactured and noise can mimic relevance, the real competitive edge comes from learning to listen more carefully. Here, they share tips on how to pinpoint authentic human engagement and focus on the signals that cut through the static rather than amplify it. 

expert panel

In recent years, several prominent brands have learned that marketing can misfire when it collides with consumer sentiment. Bud Light, American Eagle and Cracker Barrel, among others, have drawn public attention not for their creativity or ambition, but for misreading how audiences would react to “clever” campaigns or evolving branding. Even well-intentioned marketing or modernization efforts can alienate longtime customers if they believe campaigns aren’t grounded in authenticity and respect. For marketing leaders, these examples underscore the need for disciplined “backfire filters”—structured ways to assess cultural sensitivity, audience alignment and brand equity before campaigns reach the public. Here, senior marketing experts from the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank share how they would have approached the internal conversations surrounding recent “marketing misfires.”