Today we’re closing out the year with trends and insights you can use now — from the state of AI readiness in marketing and CX to dramatic ad experiments and what marketers really need to focus on heading into 2026.
Here’s what’s inside:
🚨 AI Top Story: What 2025 revealed about AI readiness across marketing and customer experience
🌐 AI News for Marketers: Meta’s ad compliance playbook, polarizing AI ad campaigns, and strategic CMO moves
🛠 AI Tool of the Week: Writesonic — optimize how your brand shows up in AI “answer engines”
🎯 Killer Marketing Prompt: Build a year-end momentum plan that blends AI personalization + predictive insights
🎥 AI YouTube Resource of the Week: The Ultimate AI Playbook for 2026 by GaryVee at Intercom
🤣 AI Meme of the Day: How will AI impact our marketing?
What 2025 Revealed About AI Readiness Across Marketing & CX
A recent analysis from CMSWire digs into how far AI adoption really got in 2025 — and what brands struggled with most. Instead of focusing only on tools or demos, the report highlights how operational reality often lagged behind platform ambition. According to the author, agentic AI and automation were advancing faster than many teams could absorb, meaning brands that invested in integration and workflow alignment (not just new tech) saw the most real value.
Highlights for marketers:
Agentic AI is advancing quickly, but organizational readiness is uneven.
Many brands still focus more on dashboards than operational decision-making.
Holiday shopping data showed where integration (not flashy AI) produced measurable gains.
This is a great lens as you plan 2026 — strategy alignment matters as much as tool adoption.
A Reuters investigation reveals that Meta used an internal playbook to manage regulatory pressure around scam ads — aiming to reduce visibility to regulators while avoiding costly mandatory advertiser verification. Smart marketers will note how compliance strategy and brand safety continue shaping ad ecosystems in 2026.
The Wall Street Journal reports on Equinox’s 2026 New Year campaign that leaned into unusual AI-generated imagery (e.g., a pole-dancing political figure and surreal food visuals) to provoke discussion. Though polarizing, the campaign serves as a case study in AI creative experimentation and brand risk/response dynamics.
JFrog — a software supply chain platform — named a new Chief Marketing Officer, reflecting how companies are positioning senior leaders to guide growth in an AI-infused enterprise landscape. Leadership hires like this often signal how seriously organizations are investing in strategic marketing.
🎯 The Artificially Intelligent Enterprise - AI Agentification on the Edge
☕ AI Tangle - AI Is Breaking Out of the Screen
💡 AI CIO - Fresh Minds Outsmart the Experts
📻 AI Confidential Podcast - Are LLMs Dead?
Writesonic — AI Visibility & Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Writesonic isn’t just a text generator — it’s a brand visibility tool for AI search and response engines too. The platform analyzes how your brand, URLs, and products appear in AI-generated outputs (across LLMs, chatbots, and answer engines), compares visibility with competitors, and suggests optimizations to improve your footprint and citations.
Why you should care:
AI “search” visibility is becoming a discovery channel — if users see competitors cited in AI responses before clicking, you’re losing mindshare.
Visibility optimization goes beyond SEO — it’s AI answer positioning.
Works for product pages, brand mentions, how-to content, and lead magnets.
Ideal for: content teams, SEO teams, brand managers, and anyone optimizing for discovery in AI-driven environments.
🔗 Explore it: https://writesonic.com/
Build Your AI-Powered 2026 Momentum Plan
You are my Chief Growth Strategist.
Your task: craft a 2026 marketing action plan that leverages AI for personalization, automation, and predictive targeting.
Input:
• Audience segments (List them)
• 2025 performance highlights & gaps
• Priority channels (e.g., Meta, Google, TikTok, email)
Output:
1. Top 3 personalized AI campaigns
2. Automation flows by channel
3. Predictive triggers & metrics to monitor
4. One scenario (best/worst) for budget allocation
5. Content variations for micro-targetingUse this with your favorite LLM weekly to keep your tactic cadence aligned with KPI changes.
The Ultimate AI Playbook for 2026 by GaryVee at Intercom
Why this matters for marketers:
As AI automates more of execution, humanity becomes the differentiator — especially in customer-facing functions. In this Intercom keynote, Gary Vaynerchuk argues that customer service is ground zero for the AI shift, and that speed, accountability, and brand integrity matter more than ever in an AI-driven world.
Rather than positioning AI as a replacement for people, the talk reframes AI as leverage — freeing teams to focus on empathy, judgment, and trust at scale.
Key ideas marketers should pay attention to:
Customer service is the first major industry being transformed by AI — and a preview of what’s coming for marketing
Speed is the real cheat code in an AI world (iteration beats perfection)
As tech becomes commoditized, brand and humanity become defensible moats
“The algorithm is you” — distribution, attention, and outcomes are increasingly personal
This is less about tools and more about mindset — and a useful reset for teams figuring out how to adopt AI without flattening their brand or losing their edge.
How will AI impact our marketing?
Step 1: Ask AI.
I appreciate your support.
