A new report from the World Advertising Research Center (WARC) finds that while 59% of brand marketers expect business to be better next year versus 2025, only 19% expect marketing budgets to be higher next year.   

The failure to back that sense of business optimism for next year with added marketing resources “will heap more pressure on marketers in 2026,” stated Stephanie Siew, senior research executive, WARC.  

The survey data from the report shows that those expecting lower budgets next year are more likely to invest in performance marketing (42%) than in brand marketing (29%).    

The organization released some highlights from the report, “The Voice of the Marketer,” but the full findings are reserved for WARC members.  

Just over 60% of the more than 1,000 marketers and ad agency pros polled worldwide are concerned about the impact of U.S. trade policies and other macroeconomic conditions on their marketing strategies for 2026.  

These concerns outweigh privacy, brand safety, or societal issues.  Four in ten marketers are using scenario planning, a tool that enables marketers to model multiple economic scenarios in advance, and stress-test different decisions, as well as restructuring teams to be more agile and responsive to macro changes, according to the report.  

Specific worries include supply chain disruptions, lower demand for products, and reduced profit margins, with North American marketers being the most affected, the report found.  

Nearly 60% are worried about the disruptive effects of artificial intelligence (AI) on the marketplace. The most popular tasks for AI include summarizing large texts (76%), competitor and category analysis (74%), and customer insights (60%).    

“But growing concerns reflect a general mood of uncertainty around AI,” the report states, including “its potential benefits and limitations, its impact on existing workflows, creative processes, and changes in employment.”  

Over a third (35%) of marketers are worried that AI will replace several human functions in marketing over the next three years.   

More agencies (40%) feel threatened by AI than brand marketers (30%), which are leaning into AI to scale faster, cheaper and become more independent as budgets tighten.   

Agencies are also building AI capabilities to defend their value, “particularly amidst competition from AI-powered tech platforms.”  

WARC projects that the global ad market will grow by 7.4% to $1.17 trillion this year, of which nine in ten dollars (90.3%) will go to online-only platforms.  Most marketers plan to increase their spending on online video, influencer/creator marketing, and social media.    

Paid search will reach $274 billion in 2026, but its growth is expected to slow due to fragmentation as consumers shift from traditional search engines to platforms like Amazon and TikTok.    

A third of marketers expect to increase ad investment in retail media, while nearly 30% do not invest in the channel.