All New Winter 2026 Edition: 50 B2B Marketers on the Move

Kicking off our first installment of B2B Marketers on the Move in 2026 is this Winter edition celebrating marketing leaders who have moved up or into new roles. This series is part of our continued effort to highlight trends in the marketing labor market and the individual B2B marketing leaders making moves in their careers.

In the 2025 editions of B2B MotM (Winter 25, Spring/Summer 25, Fall 25) marketing leadership hiring was pretty consistently focused on senior-level roles emphasizing investment in revenue accountability. Through the year we saw expansion of roles focused on integrated go-to-market strategy, ABM, digital transformation, data-driven performance, and AI-influenced marketing operations, alongside an emphasis on building or modernizing marketing functions from the ground up.

Now in 2026, AI has taken on an even more pervasive role with some interesting outcomes. Research from LinkedIn found that 95% of B2B marketers use AI at least weekly and 65% use it daily or more.

“95% of B2B marketers use AI at least weekly and 65% use it daily or more.” LinkedIn.

Focus on productivity has yielded gains in many areas but not across the board. A study from Workday, Beyond Productivity: Measuring the Real Value of AI, introduced the notion of an “AI tax”: for every 10 hours saved, nearly 4 hours are lost to fixing, clarifying, or rewriting content, reducing net value quite a bit. Their research found that only 14% of employees consistently achieve net-positive outcomes from AI use, meaning productivity improvements don’t always succeed at translating into better results. I talked with Workday VP of Thought Leadership Michael Brenner about this, see our podcast episode for details.

The takeaway is that B2B brands that focus first on investing in their people, then AI, see far more productive outcomes and team satisfaction. This is particularly important if we’re going to put confidence in things like Matt Shumer’s recent article about the transformation happening where AI is quickly evolving from a tool for efficiency to a system capable of independent judgment and “taste.” For B2B marketers in 2026, this means a shift where foundational skills like prompt engineering are being eclipsed by “narrative orchestration.” As agentic AI begins to independently execute complex, month-long projects that previously required senior-level human experts, there will be a growing importance for marketing leaders who can provide the human discernment and strategic governance AI can’t replicate. At least not yet.

Four AI focused trends for the B2B marketing labor market in 2026:

1. Strong demand for strategic, digital, analytics and AI-enabled marketing skills

Robert Half’s 2026 Demand for Skilled Talent report shows marketing leaders are prioritizing digital campaign execution, analytics, automation and marketing performance roles, with continued emphasis on AI-powered marketing, A/B testing, personalization and customer experience capabilities. Hiring brands seem confident about growth but say there are skills gaps and difficulty finding qualified candidates, which is pushing them to upskill current employees and use contract talent where needed.