In 2026, AI got funded because it was … AI. But AI’s lengthy exemption from the normal rules of business will expire in 2027 as CMOs awaken to its costs, constraints, and consequences. That’s why, in 2027, AI will get funded because it performs. Forrester’s Q3 2026 CMO Pulse Survey found that 82% of US B2C marketing executives expect to provide stronger justification for future AI investments, and 78% say executive leadership demands stronger evidence of value than it did 12 months ago.

AI will lose its automatic claim on marketing dollars because CMOs will put its costs, risks, and performance through the same scrutiny as every other marketing investment. CMOs will cut initiatives whose consumption costs outrun their value, retire applications that agents make redundant, and confront operational weaknesses exposed by automation. They’ll also prepare for more AI mistakes: 64% of US B2C marketing executives believe that their use of AI is likely to produce a brand-damaging incident within the next 12 months — ouch! AI investment will continue, but its blank check will disappear.

Forrester predicts that:

  • Exorbitant AI economics will force marketers to scale back a third of AI initiatives. After years of treating AI like a strategic imperative, CMOs will enter 2027 facing an uncomfortable reality: AI isn’t cheap. As AI usage grows and martech vendors adopt usage-based pricing, every prompt, agent interaction, generated asset, and automated workflow carries a cost. The result? Marketers will no longer be able to deploy AI indiscriminately. Needing to make hard choices about which initiatives deserve investment and which don’t, they will focus finite budgets on the use cases that deliver measurable business value. Procurement and finance teams will play a larger role in AI decisions as consumption costs become harder to forecast.
  • AI agents will supersede legacy marketing and insights tools at one in 10 companies. Marketers spent the past two decades adding software to their stacks. In 2027, some will start removing it. Rather than moving between separate analytics, planning, creative, and campaign management tools, marketers will orchestrate work through AI agents. As agents become the primary interface to marketing technology, companies will reevaluate the applications that they truly need and the ones that simply add complexity and cost. The winners will be marketers that redesign workflows and operating models alongside the technology, not just swap one tool for another. Some applications will remain in the stack but play a much smaller role in daily work.
  • Five brands will suffer AI-driven growth setbacks, but adoption will stay undeterred. AI remains one of marketing’s most powerful technologies, but it also introduces new risks. As brands embed AI into customer experiences, campaigns, content, and decision-making, mistakes become more visible and more consequential. Some will damage brand perception. Others will affect revenue. But marketers won’t back away from AI because the benefits outweigh the risks, and incidents like Starbucks’ failed AI-driven campaign in South Korea won’t be isolated. The brands that fare best will be the ones that pressure-test AI experiences before launch and have a plan ready when things inevitably go sideways. Crisis planning, governance reviews, and scenario testing will become routine parts of consumer AI deployment.

Read our full Predictions 2027: B2C Marketing report (client access required) to see all five of our predictions, as well as more detail and specific advice for each of them. And be sure to attend our live webinar on Thursday, November 12, featuring all of the Forrester analysts behind these 2027 predictions.

If you’re not a Forrester client, download our complimentary Predictions 2027 guide for B2C marketing, CX, and digital business leaders, which covers our top predictions for the year ahead. And sign up for our public webinar on Tuesday, December 8, where we’ll dig into those predictions in greater detail. Additional resources, including blog posts, guides, and webinars, are available on the Predictions 2027 hub.

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