Agentic AI in Marketing: A 2026 Guide for Marketing Leaders

Agentic AI is transforming marketing from task-based automation toward goal-driven decision-making and autonomous action. This paper examines how AI agents differ from traditional automation and generative AI, their applications across marketing workflows, implications for AI-powered customer discovery and MarTech, and the governance challenges created by greater autonomy. It also presents a practical framework for marketing leaders considering responsible adoption of agentic AI.