In 2026, we are moving beyond technological transition to enter the murkier waters of disruption. AI acceleration is reshaping consumer journeys, to the point that brands must fundamentally rethink their digital presence. Case in point: with conversational AI moving to the core of customer pathways, search modes are deeply fractured. Zero-click search and AI Overviews are on the rise, making the new battleground for attention Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), not just SEO. It is now crucial to consider how your brand is represented in the AI-generated responses that increasingly shape purchasing decisions, because if the AI doesn't 'see' you, your customers won't either.
This acceleration is equally dramatic in the world of marketing, with the spectacular rise of AI Agents. From experimental tools to the strategic co-pilots of tomorrow, these autonomous agents are already being developed by the vast majority of tech players, with the market projected to reach $47 billion by 2030. They act as strategic assistants across all domains (CRM, media, performance analysis) executing tasks like message drafting, bid adjustments, and results analysis without needing human intervention once objectives are set.
To me, it is increasingly clear that the future lies in human teams augmented by AI. I believe that 2026 will mark the definitive industrialization of agentic technology, promising transformative efficiency gains for those who embrace this new technical and organizational paradigm.
Around the world, privacy watchdogs are getting much stricter about how companies handle cookie consent. They're especially focused on what happens when a user changes their mind after initially saying yes. The rule is simple: if someone pulls their consent, all data tracking (even just checking a tracker) has to stop right away.
In France, the CNIL is zooming in on the technical side of withdrawing cookie consent. They've made their point clear with two massive penalties that set a serious example: Orange was fined €50 million in late 2024 for continuing to read cookies after consent was withdrawn. Then, in late 2025, American Express was hit with a €1.5 million fine for not having the right tech in place to make sure trackers actually stopped when a user said no. The lesson here: your technology needs to be rock-solid and honor the user's “no” instantly.
Our recommendation? Start with first-party cookies. A simple, automatic script can instantly wipe these cookies from a user's browser the second they withdraw consent. For third-party cookies, the process is trickier, since you can't actually delete a cookie set by another company. This is why the CNIL demands that websites immediately block any communication with those partner servers; this means that you’ll also need a contract that confirms your partners will respect the “no tracking” signal. The good news: agencies like fifty-five can handle the technical work to get these fixes in place and keep you compliant.
By Julie Cazaux
We recently partnered with Renault Group, Contentsquare, and Kameleoon for a new type of challenge, focused on transforming Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) with AI. The goal: shortening the journey from initial data analysis to decision-making and action by specifically leveraging agentic AI – one of the technologies that will shape 2026, as Pierre pointed out. Combining Contentsquare's Sense Analyst (which condenses hours of data analysis into minutes) with Kameleoon’s PBX, an agent that turns natural language prompts into testable online experiences, our teams connected insight generation and experimentation into a single, fluid workflow for Renault Group. For us, this collaborative challenge exemplifies how AI-augmented tools can democratize the entire optimization process, allowing marketing, UX, and product teams to build and test their ideas from start to finish without requiring support from data scientists or developers.
The results of this challenge have been both rapid and tangible, and proved that while AI does not replace human expertise, it does multiply its impact. Over the course of just a few weeks, our teams produced more than 135 prompts and identified around a dozen highly qualified use cases. By using Kameleoon and ContentSquare’s AI agents, we were able to cut the time needed to generate performance recommendations in half, while accelerating the overall speed of experimentation by 55% to 89%. Moving forward, we plan to democratize AI-driven experimentation across even more teams to keep exploring how customer journeys can be improved.
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