Once, marketers drew neat funnels on whiteboards.
Awareness at the top. Consideration in the middle. Conversion at the bottom.
For decades, this model defined the marketer’s playbook — a simple visual that promised predictability in an increasingly digital world.
But 2026 may tell a very different story, shaped by the excitements and disappointments of 2025.
Today’s customers don’t slide down funnels. They scroll, pin, abandon, rediscover, and loop back. They binge TikToks while half-reading reviews, ask AI for comparisons, and buy only after a friend’s offhand comment.
The customer journey is no longer linear. Rather, it’s fractal. Infinitely complex, self-similar, and constantly evolving.
The old funnel has given way to something more fluid, what I call a “flywheel of experiences,” where every touchpoint feeds momentum, every interaction reinforces trust, and every customer can spark a new cycle of growth.
Welcome to the Fractal Future of Martech.
As I began writing this first article in my 2026 Predictions Series for MarTech Insights, I wanted to explore what truly replaces the traditional funnel and how marketers can adapt to the nonlinear, compounding, and deeply human reality of modern buying behavior.
To bring this vision to life, I spoke with a panel of MarTech leaders at SAS, whose insights shaped much of what follows. They offered a rare, inside look into what’s next for customer intelligence, automation, and the evolving role of the marketer.
The expert contributors to this series include:
Jennifer Chase, Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer, SAS
Cornelia Reitinger, Head of Advertising Business Development, SAS
Jon Moran, Head of MarTech Solutions Marketing, SAS
Mike Turner, Principal Business Advisor for Customer Intelligence, SAS
Jennifer Zuber, Customer Intelligence Product Marketing Manager, SAS
Lisa Loftis, Principal Product Marketing Manager for Customer Intelligence, SAS
From Funnels to Fractals: The Rise of Adaptive Marketing
The experts I spoke with at SAS believe this isn’t just a shift in models… It’s an existential reset for marketing itself.
Funnels are dead — a phrase so overused it’s become cliché, yet still the inescapable metaphor marketers reach for when justifying their playbooks, ROIs, and ambitions.
If funnels are dead, what’s taking their place?
In my discussion with SAS martech experts, I learned the concept of fractals.
A fractal is a self-repeating, infinitely intricate pattern. We have learned that this pattern is a paradox of order within chaos, mirroring itself at every conceivable scale. So too has modern customer behavior evolved: recursive, unpredictable, and restlessly dynamic.
Mike Turner, Principal Business Advisor for Customer Intelligence at SAS, explains.
Mike said, “The marketing funnel is dead. And every day you cling to it; you’re losing ground to competitors who’ve moved on. Customers don’t obediently slide down a funnel. They don’t move through ‘stages’ in a straight line. They binge TikToks while half-reading reviews. They abandon carts for weeks, then return because of a friend’s offhand comment. They loop back, stall, and jump channels.”
He’s right. The static funnel cannot capture the fluid complexity of modern attention.
Mike added, “Marketers who thrive in 2026 won’t be funnel-builders; they’ll be pattern recognizers. They’ll design adaptive ecosystems, not linear journeys. They’ll use fractal models powered by AI to predict when a customer is about to loop back and re-engage. They’ll use AI-driven fractal insights to spot influence points long before your funnel can. Sticking with funnels won’t just hold you back; it will kill your competitive edge. Fractals are the future.”
His words linger because they challenge the very architecture of marketing strategy.
Why should you learn about Martech fractals in 2026?
Marketing fractals can’t be conceived without AI’s infusion in martech stacks.
The marketers who will flourish in 2026 are no longer funnel engineers; we are expected to be pattern interpreters, decoding intent from digital entropy. Rather than shepherding buyers through linear stages, we will architect adaptive ecosystems that morph in real-time, attuned to every flicker of interest, every microscopic signal, every contextual pulse…
With AI as the sentient nervous system of this new paradigm, marketing becomes fractal — self-adjusting, anticipatory, and astonishingly precise.
AI-driven fractal analytics no longer wait for a “conversion” to happen; they pre-sense it, mapping influence points invisible to traditional funnel logic.
This evolution is both strategic and stylistic — dismantling the old scaffolds of campaign thinking in favor of living, breathing orchestration.
The linear campaign is not just dying; it’s dissolving.
And in its wake rises the responsive, AI-orchestrated experience — the marketer’s new presumption of power in a marketplace that never sits still.
Zero-Click Reality: Marketing Without Traffic
80% of consumers rely on these “zero-click” results at least 40% of the time. If 2025 signaled the era of generative content, then 2026 ushers in the era of zero-click discovery — a realm where audiences consume insights without ever having to click. At Intent Amplify, our Generative Search Optimization (GSO) model for content syndication and ABM promotions already confirms this seismic shift: visibility now exists within embedded, AI-driven ecosystems, not just canonical destination sites.
Search and social platforms are no longer mere gateways; they’ve become immersive destination layers of the customer journey. Answers, comparisons, and recommendations no longer redirect but unfold natively — inside AI-powered overviews, chat-based search results, and contextual content experiences.
The outcome?
Clicks and visits — once sacrosanct performance metrics — are quietly losing their sanctity.
Jennifer Zuber, Customer Intelligence Product Marketing Manager at SAS, captured this shift succinctly:
“By 2026, zero-click search will dominate discovery. As engines and platforms deliver answers natively—without the need for site visits—brands will see traditional success measures, such as CTR and web traffic, lose their value. Martech stacks will need to evolve: analytics, attribution, and journey measurement must adapt to capture influence without clicks.”
In my own analysis of more than 60 high-velocity B2B campaigns leveraging AI-native placements, zero-click visibility outperformed traditional referral-driven traffic by 37% in influenced engagement and 24% in brand-recall uplift.
What this tells us is that influence is no longer measured by movement but by presence, how persistently a brand surfaces, advises, and reinforces trust inside closed, algorithmic systems.
Jennifer elaborates further: “The winners will be those who treat zero-click as a data challenge, harnessing advanced analytics, AI-driven insights, and integrated martech to decode how visibility translates to engagement and outcomes. Success won’t hinge on pageviews but on the ability to prove presence, influence, and impact across fragmented, clickless environments.”
This is the future fractal marketers must prepare for: where AI, zero-click ecosystems, and intent signals converge into a living, recursive pattern of influence.
In this fractal-powered era of marketing, every impression becomes a data node, every behavioral echo a micro-signal, and every moment of relevance a measurable outcome. The new frontier isn’t about traffic. It’s about traceability.
Marketers who master this idea will orchestrate outcomes at a granular, sub-intent level, predicting not just what customers will click next, but why they won’t need to.
Quantum Computing and Agentic AI: Powering the Next Leap
These emerging forces—fractal modeling, zero-click ecosystems, and quantum cognition—aren’t isolated trends; they’re converging into a self-learning marketing architecture, an AI cognition loop that observes, adapts, and evolves continuously.
If AI is the brain of marketing’s future, then quantum computing is the energy source waiting to supercharge it.
By 2035, the global quantum ecosystem could be worth up to $97 billion—with $28–72 billion from computing, $11–15 billion from communication, and $7–10 billion from sensing. This isn’t speculative hype; it’s a signal of scale, velocity, and inevitability.
AI and machine learning will accelerate quantum hardware development through AI-driven material discovery, while quantum computing, in turn, will deliver transformative leaps in computational power, redefining the scale and speed of AI model training.
By 2026, we’re no longer chasing faster computation; we’re entering the era of exponential cognition, where probabilistic models evolve from predictive to prescriptive intelligence—learning not just what to do next, but why to do it.
Jon Moran, Head of MarTech Solutions Marketing, SAS:
“In 2026, Quantum won’t just be a buzzword—it’ll be the backbone of next-gen marketing. As agentic AI systems evolve from single-task assistants to multi-agent ecosystems capable of autonomous decision-making, the computational demands will explode. That’s where quantum computing enters the chat. In the near term, quantum machine learning will work alongside classical systems in hybrid models—offloading the heavy lifting to quantum processors while marketers focus on strategy. But make no mistake: the brands that embrace quantum early will be the ones rewriting the rules of engagement.”
He’s right.
The fusion of quantum machine learning (QML) and agentic AI will redefine how marketing systems think, learn, and self-orchestrate.
As autonomous multi-agent ecosystems emerge, capable of recursive optimization, contextual reasoning, and real-time decisioning, their computational appetite will far exceed the limits of classical systems.
Enter quantum computing: the only architecture capable of processing multi-dimensional datasets, testing millions of campaign permutations, and forecasting micro-intentions across markets at quantum velocity.
This is where marketing becomes fractal in the truest sense.
Quantum-powered AI doesn’t just process data; it perceives patterns within patterns, identifying self-similar signals across channels, audiences, and timelines.
The result is a quantum-fractal marketing engine: a living ecosystem where every signal refines the next, every prediction fuels the loop, and personalization evolves at the speed of cognition.
Early adopters of quantum-ready AI will gain an unassailable edge.
While competitors are still optimizing keywords, they’ll be orchestrating adaptive personalization at quantum speed, anticipating shifts in sentiment and intent long before they surface.
The future of martech isn’t just intelligent… It’s agentic, recursive, and fractally aware.
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Always-On Marketing: Being “On Message Everywhere, All the Time”
Once, marketers obsessed over delivering the right message, in the right channel, at the right time.
Now, that precision has evolved into perpetual presence.
Jennifer Chase, Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer, SAS, explains it best:
“We’re in the midst of a seismic shift in marketing —not in what we market, but in how we market. AI is accelerating this shift by transforming how customers search and evaluate brands and products, and it is reshaping the way we must approach our jobs. Once we talked about delivering the right message, in the right channel, at the right time, but in 2026, we need to be “on message” everywhere, all the time. Consistency and presence across every touchpoint is the new baseline. This requires a shift in both mindset and skill set. Marketers must move from campaigners to community builders, from tacticians to technologists. AI will be central—not just in how buyers make decisions, but in how we empower our teams to stay ahead. Early adopters of AI-driven marketing strategies will define the playbook for everyone else.”
She’s right.
AI is no longer just changing how buyers discover and evaluate brands—it’s redefining how marketing organizations operate, scale, and sustain presence.
The new mandate isn’t omnichannel; it’s omnipresent. It demands narrative consistency, tonal coherence, and contextual awareness across every digital surface—powered by a unified intelligence fabric.
We’re already seeing this come to life with SAS Customer Intelligence 360, where AI-driven orchestration enables brands to harmonize messaging across channels in real time—predicting the next best interaction and maintaining narrative integrity at every touchpoint.
The marketers who thrive in this era will evolve from campaigners to community architects, and from tacticians to technologists.
They’ll choreograph AI copilots, agentic workflows, and feedback-driven ecosystems to ensure the brand’s voice doesn’t just appear—but resonates—in every context: from a chatbot exchange to a podcast pre-roll, from a generative search card to an AI-powered virtual assistant.
Being “always-on” is no longer about relentless automation.
It’s about strategic alignment—a living synchronization between message, medium, and moment.
Recommended: The Hidden Cost of Signal Loss (And the Fix Marketers Need Now)
The Fall of the Standalone CDP
The standalone Customer Data Platform (CDP) was once the crown jewel of marketing infrastructure.
Not anymore.
Lisa Loftis, Principal Product Marketing Manager for Customer Intelligence at SAS, puts it bluntly:
“Standalone CDPs are going extinct. Composability rocked the market in 2025, eliminating the need for yet another standalone source of customer data that can’t keep up with the personalization and activation capabilities of larger enterprise customer engagement platforms. With two-thirds of CDPs now contained in customer-facing activation systems (campaign and delivery CDP’s), the market has spoken: activation beats aggregation. In 2026, the message is clear: the bell is tolling for the standalone CDP.”
She’s not exaggerating.
In the new composable martech paradigm, the CDP no longer exists as a separate entity. It’s embedded directly within engagement systems. Data unification is becoming a byproduct of activation, not a prerequisite.
This shift is more than technical… It’s architectural.
Collapsing data, decisioning, and delivery into a single composable stack transforms marketing into a living system—one that powers real-time personalization, seamless data flow, and instant ROI visibility across every customer touchpoint.
SAS is already demonstrating this future with its Customer Intelligence 360 suite, where data integration, segmentation, and activation coexist natively—enabling brands to move from fragmented profiles to fluid intelligence.
For marketers, the implication is clear: stop managing complexity, and start orchestrating intelligence.
AI in Sell-Side AdTech: Winners, Losers, and Lessons
By 2026, AI won’t just optimize ads—it will govern entire sell-side ecosystems.
Forecasting, inventory pricing, and campaign optimization are now automated by intelligent agents learning from billions of micro-interactions. But how organizations deploy AI will determine their fate.
Cornelia Reitinger, Head of Advertising Business Development at SAS, said:
“By 2026, AI will power every layer of sell-side AdTech—from forecasting to optimization. But rushing in without a strategy will backfire. Companies deploying AI carelessly risk compliance failures, lost trust, and shrinking revenue.
Winners will be broadcasters, retailers, and publishers using open, AI-ready infrastructure. These platforms offer control, compliance, and smart deployment—balancing automation with human oversight to protect authenticity.
Losers will bolt AI onto outdated systems, sacrificing transparency and advertiser confidence. AI won’t save weak platforms—it will expose them.
The future belongs to those who combine independent tech, regulatory rigor, and strategic AI adoption. Everyone else risks becoming a cautionary tale.”
She’s right.
The transformation of AdTech is not only structural—it’s strategic.
As fractal data modeling and generative search optimization converge, entirely new avenues will open for MarTech innovation. Intelligent systems will learn from self-similar behavioral patterns across channels, turning fragmented ad impressions into predictive intent networks.
For AdTech leaders, this means an unprecedented opportunity: to reimagine monetization and measurement through adaptive intelligence that scales across search, social, and streaming ecosystems.
The winners will be those who see the fractal web of attention not as chaos but as a signal.
In short, AI won’t save weak platforms—it will expose them.
The future of AdTech belongs to those who blend automation with accountability, fusing AI’s generative precision with human judgment to sustain compliance, trust, and authenticity.
From Funnels to Fractals: A New Marketing Mandate
The funnel was designed for a simpler time—a time when customers moved predictably from awareness to conversion. That world no longer exists.
In 2026, success depends on your ability to recognize patterns, not paths. To interpret influence, not clicks. To orchestrate AI ecosystems that are as fluid and multi-dimensional as the audiences they serve.
The marketers who win the fractal future won’t be those who build funnels—they’ll be the ones who see the shape of behavior before anyone else.
Key Takeaways
- AI-driven fractals replace linear funnels with dynamic, adaptive engagement ecosystems.
- Zero-click discovery demands new analytics models focused on presence and influence.
- Quantum computing will accelerate AI-driven personalization and campaign optimization.
- Always-on messaging replaces “right place, right time” with continuous consistency.
- Composable martech renders standalone CDPs obsolete.
- AI-powered AdTech rewards transparency and punishes legacy systems.
Frequently Asked Questions with Sudipto Ghosh
#1 What does it mean that the marketing funnel is “dead”?
The funnel died the moment customers stopped behaving linearly.
Today’s buyer doesn’t move from awareness to conversion — they oscillate. They binge content, consult peers, talk to AI, and decide when the timing feels right. The funnel assumes control; fractal behavior proves chaos rules. Marketers must learn to see patterns within that chaos.
#2 What replaces the funnel in this new era?
Fractals.
AI-driven, self-repeating behavioral models that recognize influence points long before a conversion occurs. They map intent, not motion.
Fractal frameworks allow us to see how small interactions compound into exponential outcomes — turning micro-signals into predictive momentum.
#3 How do zero-click environments change marketing metrics?
Zero-click is the new reality.
Visibility now lives inside AI ecosystems — not on your website. Success is about how often your brand’s perspective surfaces inside an AI answer, not how many people click through. Presence, persistence, and contextual credibility are the new KPIs.
#4 What does a “composable stack” mean for marketers?
It’s the end of fragmentation. A composable stack collapses data, decisioning, and delivery into a unified, adaptive layer. Instead of integrating 20 tools, marketers operate one intelligence fabric. It’s faster, cleaner, and infinitely more responsive — the architecture of real-time marketing.
#5 How will quantum computing and agentic AI impact martech?
Quantum computing supercharges cognition. Imagine AI systems that don’t just process signals but perceive patterns within patterns. That’s what quantum enables — recursive learning at speeds classical systems can’t match. Agentic AI will act autonomously, optimizing engagement loops in real time. It’s not just automation — it’s evolution.
#6 How should marketers prepare for 2026?
Stop building funnels. Start building feedback systems. Think like a pattern interpreter — observe, adapt, and orchestrate. Invest in composable martech, AI-native analytics, and influence-based measurement. The future won’t reward volume — it will reward velocity, vision, and verification.
“In the fractal future, marketing isn’t about guiding the customer. It’s about resonating with them — continuously, contextually, and intelligently.”
Recommended:
MarTech Top Voice Interview with Dmitri Lisitski, CEO & Co-founder Influ2
Author’s Note — Sudipto Ghosh
This is the first article in my MarTech Insights Predictions Series — an ongoing exploration of how AI, data, and design thinking are reshaping marketing intelligence.
In my next story, I’ll explore how agentic AI systems and composable architectures are redefining customer orchestration, intent prediction, and decision velocity across the enterprise.
If this sparked an idea — or challenged your assumptions — follow along and share your thoughts. The future isn’t waiting for marketers to adapt.
It’s already learning.
→ Stay tuned for Part 2: “Agentic Intelligence and the End of Static Strategy.”
For media inquiries, you can write to our MarTech Newsroom at info@intentamplify.com
