Key Tech Priorities for Marketing Leaders in 2026: How to Evaluate Marketing AI for Real Business Outcomes

The martech landscape is undergoing a major reset. Marketing leaders are redesigning their marketing stacks around AI, orchestration, and intelligence-driven decisioning. But with AI now embedded in every product pitch, senior marketing leaders face a new challenge: how to separate meaningful capabilities from noise and make technology decisions that truly move the business.

In this session, Uniphore joined by Tapan Patel, Analyst at IDC, to unpack the emerging priorities shaping marketing leaders’ investment strategies for 2026 and beyond. Rather than focusing on tools, we’ll focus on the outcomes marketers must anchor to: measurable lift, reduced waste, faster decision cycles and adaptive customer experiences.

Together, we’ll explore the frameworks, signals and evaluation criteria that help marketing organizations adopt AI responsibly, effectively and with confidence.

What you’ll learn:

• IDC’s latest research on the 2026 marketing technology shift and what it means for how CMOs evaluate AI
• What to look for in Marketing AI: intelligence layers, real-time context, orchestration capability, transparency, and measurable optimization
• How to assess whether an AI solution can deliver business outcomes, not just automation
• The role of simulations, qualification, and predictive modeling in future-proofing marketing operations
• A practical framework for refining your martech roadmap for an intelligence-first era