United States

Marketing and communications leaders are facing another year of transformation, disruption, and uncertainty. From AI reshaping search and workflows, to video dominating attention, to the professionalization of influencer commerce and the critical role of social customer care, the next twelve months will give us plenty of challenges and opportunities. 

This definitive guide breaks down the 15 biggest trends that will shape the year ahead in marketing, PR, and social media. Each trend comes with clear action points and shows how Meltwater’s suite of solutions can help you not just keep up, but lead.

The rise of AI Search Optimization and LLM reputation management

How to build resilience against misinformation and narrative attacks

Why creator commerce is shifting to performance-based partnerships

The new rules of video, social SEO, and multi-platform engagement

Get your copy today and prepare your team for the year ahead.

Thank you, we hope you find this trends guide interesting.

Get the Trends Guide

Keep ahead of the big changes in PR and marketing communications in 2026, including agentic AI, misinformation, and influencer marketing.

Marketing Trends to Watch in 2026

Global Research Report by Meltwater & YouGov

How do audiences really feel about AI-generated content?

Trust it? Skeptical of it? Engage with it differently across platforms and generations?

AI is transforming how content is created, but public perception of AI-generated content is evolving just as quickly.

Created in partnership with the leading market research firm, YouGov, the Public Perception of AI-Generated Content Report reveals how almost 10,000 people interpret and respond to AI-generated content, and what it means for brands, marketers, and communicators navigating this new era.

Across industries and regions, this report delivers actionable insights for anyone shaping modern brand storytelling.

For brands and communicators, understanding perception is critical. Missteps can damage credibility. The right approach can unlock engagement at scale.

This report offers clear, data-backed guidance to help you:

Develop AI content strategies that resonate

Navigate transparency and disclosure challenges

Make informed decisions about AI adoption in marketing and communications

Download the full report to understand where trust is built, where it’s broken, and how to communicate effectively in an AI-driven world.

The images on this page and some images within the report were created using AI and are used for visual illustration only.

By completing and submitting this form, you will receive information, tips, and promotions from Meltwater, and you agree that Meltwater may share your contact information with YouGov for marketing purposes.

How do audiences really feel about AI-generated content?
Trust it? Sceptical of it? Engage with it differently across platforms and generations?

The Public Perception of AI-Generated Content Report

Thank you! 
The Public Perception of AI-Generated Content Report is ready! Enjoy

Public Perception of AI-Generated Content

Learn how to influence ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and other LLMs, before they shape your reputation for you.

AI is now the first place people go to research brands. If you’re not showing up in AI-generated answers, you’re invisible to your audience. This guide shows PR and communications teams exactly how to take control.

Inside the guide, you’ll discover how to:

Understand how AI makes decisions: Learn how training data and real-time citations influence brand visibility.

Turn PR into a growth engine for AI visibility: See why earned media is now one of the most powerful signals for LLMs.

Build a repeatable AI visibility strategy: Follow a proven workflow to monitor, influence, and optimize your presence.

Leverage the C.O.R.E. framework: Scale visibility with Credibility, Omnipresence, Readability, and Endurance.

Activate the right channels: From news media to Reddit and YouTube, know where AI actually looks.

This guide is backed by insights from Meltwater’s GenAI Lens, the first platform built to monitor and optimize brand visibility in AI. 

Take control of your brand in the age of AI

Download the Own Your AI Visibility guide and start shaping how AI represents your brand today.

Get the Guide!

Download this free guide to learn how to influence ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and co., and take control of your brand’s visibility in AI-driven search.

Free Guide: Own Your Brand’s Visibility in AI

Own Your AI Visibility - Shape What AI Says About Your Brand

Media monitoring is so much more than just tracking keywords and mentions. It’s an essential component of any modern-day business strategy, helping you and your team identify new PR and marketing opportunities, assess your brand’s perception via brand tracking online, avoid crises, and keep track of your competition.

Download our free guide Media Monitoring Guide for details on:

How media monitoring serves different teams within your organization

Don’t wait to start strengthening your customer acquisition methods, improving your marketing efforts, and generating positive PR through media monitoring.

Media monitoring goes beyond tracking mentions. How to build a media monitoring strategy and use this powerful tool for business success.

The Ultimate Guide to Media Monitoring

Thank you for downloading the Ultimate Guide to Media Monitoring. You can access the PDF here!

Document-level sentiment is no longer enough, here’s what to do instead.

Traditional sentiment analysis was built for a simpler media landscape. Today, conversations are complex, multi-entity, and full of nuance. 

This co-authored white paper from Meltwater and Converseon explains why organizations must move beyond document-level sentiment to entity- and aspect-level analysis to unlock more accurate, actionable, and AI-ready insights.

Download the white paper to learn how leading brands, researchers, and communications teams are closing critical insight gaps and future-proofing their analytics.

In Getting Granular with Sentiment Analysis, you’ll discover:

Why document-level sentiment creates blind spots in modern media and social analysis

How entity-level sentiment reveals who or what sentiment is actually about

How aspect-level sentiment uncovers the specific drivers shaping perception

Real-world examples showing how mixed sentiment is misclassified, and how granular models fix it

Why granular sentiment is becoming essential for AI accuracy, explainability, and governance

How entity- and aspect-level approaches improve recall, precision, and actionability

This report is designed for professionals who rely on sentiment data to guide decisions, including:

Social listening and media intelligence teams

Market research and insights professionals

Data, analytics, and AI governance leaders

If accuracy, transparency, and actionability matter to your work, this paper is for you.

Through Meltwater’s partnership with Converseon, research-grade NLP models and attitudinal analytics are integrated directly into Meltwater’s enterprise social intelligence capabilities, enabling deeper insight without sacrificing scale.

The result is a practical, evidence-based guide to the next evolution of sentiment analysis.

Download your report on Getting Granular with Sentiment Analysis

Why organizations must move beyond document-level sentiment to unlock more accurate, actionable, and AI-ready insights.

Getting Granular with Sentiment Analysis

Thank you for downloading "The Getting Granular with Sentiment Analysis" report

AI is rewriting how brands get discovered

Buyers aren’t browsing anymore — they’re asking AI.

And AI isn’t just finding answers… it’s deciding which brands show up, how they’re described, and who gets trusted.

This report reveals what’s actually happening behind the scenes — and why LinkedIn has become one of the most influential sources shaping AI-generated answers.  And most brands are not prepared for how that changes visibility.

AI is prioritizing expertise, relevance, and structure.

Turn your LinkedIn content into an AI visibility engine

The brands winning in AI aren’t just publishing more, they’re activating their experts. This report shows how to:

Track where your brand appears in AI-generated answers

Identify which sources shape your narrative

Measure how your content performs across AI models

Analysis of 9.5 million AI citations reveals LinkedIn’s growing influence in AI-generated answers.

How LinkedIn Powers the Answers AI Gives the World

Thank you! 
How LinkedIn Content Wins in AI Search — Gen AI Visibility Report is ready!

How LinkedIn Content Wins in AI Search

This new Meltwater Intelligence Report explores how public conversation, social platforms, and AI driven search are reshaping trust and reputation in the Australian insurance sector.

With insights drawn from nearly 5,000 media and online conversations across a 90 day period, ‘The Trust Gap’ reveals how customer perception is formed in moments of friction, uncertainty, and silence, and why insurers are often absent from the conversations that matter most.

Trust is no longer owned by brands: It is shaped across forums, social platforms, and AI generated summaries, often without brands being present in the conversation.

Frustration doesn’t build, it spikes: Claims related issues spread quickly across social channels before reaching mainstream media, shaping perception in real time.

Small moments can become big narratives: Individual experiences can escalate rapidly, turning into broader sector wide conversations about fairness and trust.

Uncertainty fills the gaps: When information is fragmented across media, influencers, and AI generated sources, customers are left to interpret conflicting signals.

Influence now sits with the crowd: Creators, communities, and AI systems are redefining how insurance products are understood, beyond traditional brand control.

If you are not visible, you are defined by others: AI generated search is driven by earned media and open web sources, meaning third party content shapes how your brand is represented.

Download the full report to understand what makes Australians trust, question, and choose their insurance providers today.

The Trust Gap: Reputation in Australian Insurance

The Trust Gap: What Public Conversation Reveals About Reputation in Australian Insurance

Generative AI has transformed the way marketing and communications teams create content, research topics and answer questions. But while today's AI is powerful, it is only as useful as the context it has. Without access to your organisation's data and business context, AI often delivers generic responses and relies on separate manual workflows to provide the context it needs.

A new open standard called Model Context Protocol (MCP) is rapidly reshaping the generative AI landscape. By enabling AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot to securely connect with business systems, MCP unlocks a new generation of AI that can work with trusted data, not just public information.

Watch this webinar as we explore why MCP is emerging as one of the most important developments in today’s generative AI landscape, what it means for the future of marketing and communications intelligence, and how connected AI will transform the way teams discover insights, analyse conversations and make decisions.

Sign up to watch

On-Demand Webinar: The Next Era of AI for Marketing & Communications Intelligence

Discover how AI-powered intelligence is transforming marketing and communications, helping teams turn media, social, and AI signals into action.

The Next Era of Marketing & Communications Intelligence

Thank you! We hope you will find this webinar insightful.

Your next customer may never visit Google. They'll ask ChatGPT instead. As more people turn to AI assistants for answers and recommendations, brands need a new approach to visibility.

In this virtual session, Meltwater Senior Director of Product Nate Pallen explores how large language models evaluate and recommend brands, why traditional SEO is no longer enough, and what marketers can do to improve their visibility in AI-generated responses. You'll also see a practical framework for understanding what's influencing your brand's AI visibility and where to focus first.

Why AI-driven discovery is changing brand visibility and how it complements traditional SEO.

The three drivers of AI visibility: Authority, Clarity, and Frequency.

How to identify what's limiting your brand's AI visibility using a practical framework and GenAI Lens.

How to build a phased roadmap to strengthen your visibility in AI-generated responses over time.

Watch the recording to learn how AI evaluates brands and leave with a practical framework for improving your visibility in AI-generated responses.

Request A Demo

On Demand Webinar: How to Build Brand Visibility in the Age of AI

Meltwater's Nate Pallen explains how AI evaluates brands and what you can do to improve AI visibility.

Webinar: Mastering LLM Visibility

Mastering AI Visibility Webinar

Consumer Trust in Generative AI: Insights for APAC Brands

Generative AI is transforming how brands across APAC create content, engage audiences, and scale communications. But while adoption is accelerating, consumer trust is evolving more cautiously, with attitudes varying significantly across the region.

Join Meltwater and YouGov for an exclusive webinar exploring new research into consumer attitudes toward generative AI and its impact on brands, marketing, media, and communications.

Drawing on insights from nearly 10,000 consumers across seven countries and Meltwater’s analysis of 150M+ online conversations, this session will reveal where audiences embrace AI, where they remain sceptical, and how organisations can build trust in the AI era—with a focus on Australia and Singapore.

How consumers across APAC really feel about generative AI including why Singapore is one of the few markets where excitement outweighs scepticism and what this reveals about attitudes toward AI adoption across the region.

Where audiences accept AI, and where they don't from journalism and advertising to brand and marketing communications.

Why transparency is becoming increasingly important as consumer expectations around AI disclosure continue to evolve and what this means for organisations looking to build trust.

The emerging trust risks brands need to understand including concerns around misinformation, authenticity, deception, and misleading AI-generated content.

Whether you work in PR, communications, social media, content marketing, or brand strategy, this webinar will help you understand evolving consumer expectations and navigate the trust challenges of the AI era.

Complete the form to view the webinar on-demand, and dive into these trends and see how you can apply these ideas to your strategy for the year ahead.

On-Demand Webinar: Trust in the Age of AI - APAC

Explore new YouGov x Meltwater research from nearly 10,000 consumers and learn how to build trust in the AI era.

Guide

Thank you!

Explore more free guides, reports & webinars

Explore by type

Guides

Webinars

Reports

Explore by topic

Let's build your Meltwater suite