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Blog
Oct 28, 2026

Digital Marketing in 2036: What Will Change, and What Won’t

In 2016, digital took roughly 12% of India’s ad spend. By the end of 2025 it was 59%, and dentsu’s forecast puts it near 70% by 2027. One decade, and the market flipped.

Now try remembering what people predicted back then. A lot of it was wrong, and that’s worth keeping in mind before anyone, this article included, tells you what 2036 looks like.

Forecasts age badly, so start there

Cookies are the cleanest example. Google spent years planning to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome, pushed the date back again and again, then kept them in 2025 and wound down Privacy Sandbox, the system that was meant to replace them. Whole roadmaps were built around a deadline that never arrived.

AI shopping is following a similar pattern. OpenAI launched Instant Checkout inside ChatGPT in September 2025 to plenty of excitement. One 2026 analysis says OpenAI moved away from it that March, and another still described it as paused in mid-September. The direction looks right. The timing keeps slipping.

So read what follows as direction, not a schedule.

Search turns into answers

Start with what’s measurable now. SparkToro’s analysis of Similarweb data found 68.01% of US Google searches ended without a click in the first four months of 2026. When an AI Overview appeared, click-through to the results below dropped by nearly 60%, though the study doesn’t isolate how much of the overall rise AI Overviews explain. Pew Research Center’s browsing study found a similar pattern: 8% of searches with an AI summary produced a click on a result, against 15% without one.

These are US figures, and Indian behaviour may differ. But the trend line is hard to argue with, and mobile is worse than desktop: SparkToro-based reporting puts mobile zero-click near 77%.

Over ten years, that probably means ranking matters less than being cited. Visibility shifts from “did they click” to “did the answer name us”. The clicks that survive tend to be the valuable ones, since branded searches, local queries and high-intent transactional searches hold up better than informational ones. Expect measurement to move toward brand mentions inside AI answers, branded search volume and direct traffic, because click reports alone will undercount.

Software starts doing some of the shopping

Agentic commerce, where an AI agent completes the purchase for you, has real infrastructure behind it already. Stripe and OpenAI built the Agentic Commerce Protocol, Google launched its Agent Payments Protocol in 2025, and in January 2026 Google and Shopify unveiled the Universal Commerce Protocol. Google then announced a shared Universal Cart across Search, Gemini, YouTube and Gmail at I/O in May 2026.

The numbers people quote are big. One merchant guide relays a McKinsey estimate, via Shopify, of $3 trillion to $5 trillion in consumer commerce mediated by agents globally by 2030. Treat that as a scenario, not a measurement. The buy-step launches so far are US-first, and the pause on Instant Checkout shows how uneven the rollout is.

What this changes for marketers is who you’re persuading. If an agent shortlists products, clean product data, structured markup, honest reviews and clear return terms start doing the job a persuasive banner used to do. The storefront may no longer be the last touchpoint before the sale.

Ads move closer to the checkout

India’s mix is already tilting this way. WPP Media’s forecast has commerce-led advertising as the fastest-growing segment in 2026, at 24.2%, while content-driven advertising’s share has slid from 91% in 2010 to 70%. Dentsu’s report also names retail media as the fastest-growing digital segment. Programmatic already accounts for about 42% of digital spend.

Estimates of digital’s share differ by who’s counting. Pitch Madison says 64% for 2026, WPP says 68.1%, dentsu says about 70% by 2027. They use different definitions, so the useful takeaway is the direction: ad budgets are following the purchase.

Video and creators keep taking share

Dentsu’s report has online video growing 22.3% to reach about 29% of digital ad spend by the end of 2026, level with social media’s share. It credits creator-led content, regional-language video and short-form formats for much of that momentum.

That’s a near-term read, but the logic stretches further out. When search hands people a summary and an agent handles the comparison, the places where audiences actually spend attention, and where a person they follow vouches for something, carry more weight. Brands that treat creators as a media channel rather than a one-off campaign are probably better placed. And the quality bar rises: when anyone can generate passable video in minutes, the work that stands out is the work with a real point of view behind it.

Consent becomes the asset

Chrome kept its cookies, but that’s not the end of the privacy story. India’s DPDP Rules were notified in November 2025, and the main obligations on notice, consent, breach reporting and children’s data apply from around mid-May 2027. They require consent that is as easy to withdraw as it was to give, and breach reporting within 72 hours.

Third-party cookies’ survival is a policy decision that could change again. Consented first-party data doesn’t depend on any browser’s mood, which makes it the sturdier bet over ten years.

What probably stays the same

Not everything gets automated. Dentsu’s report names out-of-home as the only traditional segment still forecast to grow, at about 3% a year. People still pass billboards, still trust a familiar name, still need a reason to pick you over the next option.

A reasonable bet is that as AI makes content cheap, trust gets scarcer and more valuable. Original data, real expertise and a brand people recognise are harder to fake than another well-structured page. Channels will keep getting reshuffled, and the platforms behind them will keep changing their rules. A business that people already know and trust has far less to fear from any single reshuffle.

Where to put effort now

  • Build to be cited. Direct answers, original data and consistent facts about your brand across the web.
  • Make product and service data machine-readable. Structured markup, accurate feeds, clear policies.
  • Collect first-party data properly. Clear notice, easy withdrawal, DPDP-ready.
  • Watch the commerce layer. Retail media and marketplace ads are where budgets are heading.
  • Measure beyond clicks. Track branded search, mentions in AI answers and assisted conversions.

None of this needs a prediction to come true on schedule. It only needs the direction to hold.

FAQ

How will digital marketing change in the next 10 years? Likely shifts include more answers delivered inside AI search without clicks, AI agents handling parts of product research and purchase, advertising moving closer to the point of sale, and consent-based first-party data becoming central. Timing remains uncertain.

Will SEO still matter in 2036? Yes, but its goal is expanding from ranking to being cited in AI-generated answers. Technical quality, original information and clear authority signals remain the foundation.

Are third-party cookies going away? Not in Chrome for now. Google kept them in 2025 and wound down Privacy Sandbox. Safari and Firefox already block them, and India’s DPDP rules still push marketers toward consented first-party data.

Sources (publish as a references list):

#Blog#GrowthEngine#DigitalInfrastructure