AI Marketing Trends
September 2026
The AI shifts in search, paid, content and outbound that actually moved numbers this month, with the data behind each one. Written for founders and marketing leads who have to decide what to try next, not next year.
Built from work with teams at
%202.png&w=384&q=75){kind=logo}
Four numbers that change the plan
A preview of the data inside. Figures shown here are placeholders until the report is sourced.
Six trends, no filler
Each trend ends with a one-page 'try this in 30 days' checklist you can hand to your team.
Search is splitting in two
AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity referrals by industry, and what it takes to get cited instead of scraped.
Agents replaced the tool stack
Marketing teams that run agents for research, briefs and reporting, what they automated first and what they kept human.
Paid media on autopilot
Performance Max, Advantage+ and generated creative: where the algorithms won this month and where they burned budget.
Content at scale without the penalty
How the teams still ranking after the 2026 updates use AI: original data, expert review and fewer, better pages.
Outbound after the crackdown
AI-researched personalisation, deliverability rules and reply rates now that inbox providers filter templated sequences.
The 30-day playbook
A week-by-week plan to test the three trends most likely to pay off for your channel mix.
From trend 1: where the LLM traffic actually lands
The share of sessions arriving from ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews doubled again this quarter, but the distribution is nothing like classic organic. Almost all of it lands on three page types: comparison pages, pricing pages and pages with original numbers in them. Blog posts written to rank for head terms received close to none of it. The teams winning this traffic did not chase more keywords. They restructured a handful of pages so a model can quote them in one sentence, added the data those models keep asking for, and
Unlock the full report
Tell us where to send it and keep reading.
Written for the person who owns the number
Founders
Which AI marketing bets are paying off right now, so you know what to fund and what to ignore this quarter.
Marketing leads
Channel-by-channel data on search, paid, content and outbound, and the 30-day tests worth running first.
Growth and RevOps
What an agent-run pipeline looks like in practice: tooling, handoffs, and the metrics that changed once it went live.
"If you're looking for a team that can support you, help scale your product, and be a true technical partner, slashdev.io is the way to go. Features that took months to finish are getting done in days. They have completely changed my business!"
Read it before your next marketing review
Six trends, sourced data and a 30-day playbook. Opens straight away, no waiting on an email.
Before you fill in the form
Is the report really free?
Yes. There is no paid version. It is how we introduce ourselves to teams thinking about AI in their marketing.
Will you call me?
Possibly. Someone from Slashdev may call to ask what you're working on and whether the numbers matched your experience. Say no and we stop.
How is my data used?
Your details go into our CRM so we can send the report and follow up by email, or by phone or SMS if you gave a number, about the report and our services. You can opt out at any time. We never sell or share them. Our privacy policy has the details.
Is there a new edition every month?
That is the plan. Everyone who downloads this one gets the October edition by email first.