Kantar Marketing Trends 2026

Summary:

This is Kantar's annual 'Marketing Trends' report, a thought-leadership piece produced by the global market research and brand consultancy.

The report mentions Kantar’s own suite of research products (BrandZ, MONITOR, LIFT/LIFT+, Media Reactions, its AI-consumer research, synthetic data offering, and its 'Blueprint for Brand Growth' framework).

Each of the ten trends is written by a different Kantar executive or thought leader and ends with a promotional 'dive deeper' link to a related Kantar product or campaign page, making the commercial intent explicit throughout.

Methodologically, this is not a single study but a curated digest of many disparate Kantar data points — consumer and marketer self-reported survey percentages (e.g. on AI assistant use, DEI attitudes, RMN/creator investment plans), proprietary ad-effectiveness/ROI databases (LIFT, LIFT+), and a long-run brand-value analysis (BrandZ).

Because the underlying evidence types vary trend-by-trend (self-reported survey data, observed ad-performance/ROI data, and expert commentary/predictions all mixed together) and none is disclosed in enough methodological detail within this piece itself (sample sizes, fieldwork dates, and questionnaire wording are not given here), the report as a whole should be treated primarily as expert judgment/opinion synthesizing external stats, not as a single rigorous study.