The State of Digital 2027: What’s Actually Paying Off in Marketing
336 marketing and business leaders, most of them in South Africa, told us what they’ve bought, what’s running and what’s paying for itself. Insight 2027 reports all of it, including the findings nobody was hoping for.
That’s what our 2028 survey sets out to test. Add your answers and the full Insight 2027 report unlocks as soon as you submit.
You Get
The full Insight 2027 report, instantly.
Your Data
Reported in aggregate only. No business is named.
Finishing beats buying. Budgets grew this year, but the ability to use them didn’t keep pace. The organisations pulling ahead aren’t the ones with the most technology, the biggest budgets or the most AI pilots. They’re the ones that finished something: connected the CRM, made revenue visible, and put AI into production instead of just exploring it.
Respondents own 2,848 tools between them. Find out which ones are sitting idle, and what that costs the rest of the stack.
Only the equipped are shipping it. Exploring AI has no link to data foundations. Running it in production does: organisations with the weakest foundations have 1.3 AI functions live, and the strongest have 4.7.
Six in ten say they track ROI. So what are the rest of them measuring?
The highest figure in the survey, and it holds in every company size and business model. The report names it.
We ranked ten content types by how well they work. Long-form doesn’t come out near the top.
The report shows what that one in eight does differently. doesn’t come out near the top.
Digital maturity isn’t about headcount or spend. It’s about whether what you’ve bought is connected, running and measured.
Thirteen contributors wrote alongside this year’s data. They’re strategists, founders and specialists who deal with these problems inside businesses every day, and each piece takes one part of the research a step further, from AI in the contact centre to how brands get filtered out before a customer ever sees them.
CEO of Digitlab
Mike Saunders
What Your Business Will Be Able to Build in 2027
Futurist & Economist at Flus Trends
Bronwyn Williams
Moloch Games
Future Thinker | Business & Environmental Technologist | Published Author
Jean-Pierre Murray-Kline
The Last Place I Thought to Look
Head of Customer Success at Chat Inc
Michelle Matthee
The 360-Degree Customer View Has a Blind Spot
CEO of Pitch
TJ Moezelaar
Beyond the Prompt Race
Strategy Director at Second Rodeo
Daniel Brocklebank
Five Agencies,
No Editor
CX and AI Specialist
Stephen Emmett
Augment First, Automate Second: AI and Quality in the Contact Centre
Founder of ovatoyou
Amanda Reekie
Customer experience is where the revenue is
Founder of Be-cause
Integrated Communications
Beverley Houston
The new media landscape: Where journalists look for stories, AI now looks for answers
Christina Scannapiego
Head of Content at Kinsta
Kinsta
AI is changing the web, but the new landscape doesn’t make your website less important
Intuit Mailchimp
Send Less, Earn More: Key Findings From Intuit Mailchimp’s 2025 Holiday Season
Maura Nardacci
Regional Sales Director APAC & MENA at Semrush
Semrush & Digitlab
Long-form isn’t dead. It has a new first reader.
Shreya R Nambiar
Senior Content Writer at CookieYes
CookieYes
What launching inside ChatGPT and Claude taught us about discovery
We’re already preparing the 2028 edition. Complete the survey and the full Insight 2027 report unlocks as soon as you submit.
Mike Saunders and a few of the invited Contributors will walk through Insight 2027 live, from the idle 40% of the stack to the AI production gap and why data maturity outranks company size. Bring your questions about what it means for your business.
Date
18 November 2026
Time
16:00
Elevate your next conference or strategy session by inviting Mike to present on the latest trends that can shape your organization’s future. Don’t miss the opportunity to gain valuable insights and actionable strategies! Request a presentation from Mike today and empower your team to stay ahead of the curve. Contact us to secure your date!
