Your 6 Essential Digital Marketing Trends for 2027
An AI just recommended a product to your target group. But was it your product? In 2027, visibility in AI answers will play a role in determining revenue. Learn about this and five more key digital marketing trends in the DMEXCO 2026 trends report.
AI in marketing: The changes coming in 2027
AI is now a fixture in marketing – in the Summer 2026 Future Marketing Index, AI topped the rankings as the most relevant topic for 81.5 percent of the 1,310 respondents. New entry agentic AI took second place in the ranking, while conventional SEO fell to No. 32. As we look ahead to 2027, the question is therefore no longer whether you use AI, but rather how you scale it effectively.
At DMEXCO 2026, the magnitude of the changes taking place in the digital marketing landscape came into sharp focus. In ChatGPT, a new advertising channel has emerged that attracts people with concrete intent, and the line between brand and performance is blurring. At the same time, agents are taking on media-buying roles: Standards such as the Ad Context Protocol (AdCP) or IAB Tech Lab’s Agentic Advertising Management Protocols (AAMP) have been designed to ensure that buyer agents and seller agents can negotiate with each other directly.
The question of how brands are found online is also being revisited. When AI assistants create shortlists, visibility in the recommendations becomes the new shelf space. In the Future Marketing Index, AI search has already taken third place, with generative engine optimization (GEO) ranking fifth. And conventional attribution models struggle to keep track when an AI recommends a product on Tuesday that’s purchased in a company’s online store two days later.
Added to this are shifts in targeting, content, and commerce, with behavioral targeting dropping 23 places in the index, while AI is able to match ads to usage contexts almost in real time. Meanwhile, poor-quality AI-generated content is becoming a brand safety risk. In another notable trend, purchase intent is increasingly triggered in social media feeds, chats, and online communities – social advertising grew by 19.2 percent in Europe in 2025.
What to expect from the 2027 digital marketing trends report
Our report takes a closer look at these trends. It gathers together insights shared at DMEXCO 2026 by speakers from companies including OpenAI, IAB Tech Lab, Shopify, Spotify, and Disney Advertising and breaks them down into six digital marketing trends for 2027. Among other things, you’ll learn:
- Why ChatGPT is becoming a media channel, and what lessons OpenAI has learned from its first campaigns
- How agents will buy media in the future, and what points you should clarify before making your first agentic deal
- Why, according to Shopify, agentic discovery drives 2.5 times more visits to product detail pages than organic search does – and what that means for your product data
- Why the moment is set to be more important than the audience when it comes to targeting, and what role Gen Z plays in this trend
- Why the quality of the advertising environment is becoming a standard criterion in media briefs
For each trend, we’ve recommended specific actions you can incorporate into your marketing plans for 2027 straight away – from product feeds and conversion tracking to approval processes for agents and quality standards for AI-generated content.
