Overheard at the Inner Circle

Martechvibe conducted its first-ever Inner Circle, a gathering of business leaders mapping the future of marketing movements in the Middle East. Here’s what we learned.

Modern CMOs must blend data mastery, AI adoption, financial fluency and creative leadership to drive measurable business value and lead high-performing teams.

Modern point-of-care marketing demands relevance, precision, and trust. Here are the five upgrades every healthcare marketer must adopt to engage HCPs effectively at the exact moment care decisions are made.

Without a structured learning agenda, marketing budgets become allocation exercises instead of tools for insight, improvement and better decisions.

Sam Allen, CEO, Iterable, explains what’s holding marketers back. It isn’t talent or ambition; it’s the day-to-day friction of their legacy tech stack. Marketers need technology that removes busywork and simplifies complex tasks into a single workflow. It should reflect how they actually work, says Sam.

The invisible spend problem in performance advertising drains budgets as repeated clicks from returning users and scam ads inflate costs. Brands need user-level visibility and frequency controls to protect budgets, reach new audiences, and ensure true campaign efficiency.

As AI becomes the new shopping interface, retailers must rethink discovery, data, and customer experience to stay visible. Those who adapt now will shape how consumers find, trust, and buy in an AI-native world.

Performance marketing has reached a turning point. As 2026 unfolds, there are three shifts marketers need to watch and prepare for.

As AI reshapes marketing, leaders share their top priorities that will define success in 2026—from AI fluency and data foundations to trust, creativity, and simplified martech stacks.

Martechvibe spoke to CMOs and growth leaders about what marketers need to do in 2026. Here are 7 pieces of advice from marketing peers...