Why AI Makes CMOs Critical in 2026, and Why It Will End Many of Them

Signal & Stakes Season 2, Episode 1

Episode Title: Why AI Makes the CMO Role Critical in 2026. And Why It Will End Many of Them.

Episode Description: AI does not care about your intent, your political capital, or how hard your team is working. It operationalizes whatever logic it is given. And right now, that logic belongs to the CMO.

In this episode, Raja Walia and Akande Davis break down why AI is the most consequential moment for marketing leadership since marketing automation emerged in 2010, why CMOs who treat it as a technology rollout rather than a strategic decision will accelerate their own exit, and what the CMOs who will survive 2026 are already doing differently.

Key topics covered in this episode:

AI removes the buffer CMOs have historically relied on. Marketing has long been judged on influence rather than ownership. AI makes every assumption operational immediately. Vague funnel definitions, dormant lead scoring models, and unclear engagement rules do not disappear under AI. They scale.

The average CMO tenure is under two years and AI is about to make that worse for the ones who are not ready. Research conducted with Demand Metric shows that short CMO tenure is driven by leaders who default to tactical resets, rebuilding websites and refreshing scoring models, rather than making the strategic calls that define how the company goes to market.

AI is not going to fix misalignment between marketing and sales. It will weaponize it. If the logic feeding an AI-driven pipeline is broken, AI will not surface the problem. It will scale the problem faster than any team can manually correct.

Winning CMOs in 2026 are not asking what AI can do. They have already decided where it fits, what it replaces, and what it should never touch. They are defining marketing accountability before rollout, not after.

This is the second major moment for CMO relevance. The first was the emergence of marketing automation in 2010. That moment created a window for CMOs to prove strategic impact. Most did not take it. AI is the same window, opening faster and closing sooner.

Note: Signal & Stakes was previously published as Call It RevOps. The rebrand reflects a deliberate shift in the conversation, from tactical execution and operational how-tos to strategic decision making and the consequences that follow when senior leaders get it right or get it wrong. Same hosts, same honesty, different altitude.

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Signal & Stakes is a podcast for people who sit inside the decisions that shape how companies grow, compete, and survive. Each episode surfaces a real decision, the signal that was there, what was at stake, and what happened next. Not advice. Consequence.

Signal & Stakes is hosted by Raja Walia, CEO of GNW Consulting, and Akande Davis, VP of Operations at GNW Consulting.

Signal & Stakes is produced by GNW Consulting, a strategic marketing technology and revenue operations agency helping enterprise organizations make sense of their existing MarTech investments. Through the GNW Orchestration Framework, GNW Consulting helps companies connect board-level priorities to day-to-day execution, identify where AI creates leverage across go-to-market operations, and determine where human judgment should lead. Learn more.

Subscribe to Signal & Stakes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast platforms. New episodes drop monthly. Follow GNW Consulting on LinkedIn for episode releases, show updates, and content on marketing technology and go-to-market strategy. Watch full episodes on YouTube.

Transcript

Akande Davis 0:02

Welcome back to another episode of Called RevOps, the first one in 2026, and we're talking about something that I think really impacts the CMOs, and that's why AI is going to make the CMO critical, that role critical in 2026, and how it could also just end many of them. So AI is not another trend. We've seen that in 2025, Raja. It's a spotlight. And right now, I think it's directly on CMOs.

Raja Walia 0:28

Yeah, I mean, here's the thing: like when AI is first being adopted inside the space of RevOps, GTM ops, or marketing technology, and it started, I think, the tail end of 2025, but it's really going to take off in 2026. I mean, there was, we went to a few conferences last year, and I think a lot of the conversation was, you know, marketing leaders are being asked, like, how are you going to fit AI into 2026? Whether you can use it, whether it's impactful, um, but companies want to show, right? Like companies want to show how are we using AI, how are we the cutting edge and the leading and you know, leading company to use it. And I think that that's really where it is. And it isn't about adoption, it's about exposure, right? Like it's about saying as a company, we are using AI. And I think it really puts CMOs in the light, in the in the limelight a little bit, as as they used to.

Akande Davis 1:22

Because it kind of, you know, AI it kind of removes that buffer, right? It needs clarity, um, it needs direction, it needs to have something that it can measure. And CMOs historically have been been in a role where they're in they're going to influence an outcome, not necessarily own an outcome, where AI is just going to act on what it's been given. So if it's not waiting for internal alignment, if it's not, uh, if it doesn't have the right things in place, it's going to just shine a spotlight on what the CMO has been doing. And and realistically, CMOs have kind of always been on the edge.

Raja Walia 1:52

Yeah, I mean, and it doesn't really care about like your intent or politics or you know how hard you're working, or you know, we talked about revenue architecture versus revenue theater last year. It kind of operationalizes what you give it immediately. And if the idea uh is kind of like, or the logic I would say is garbage, it's going to just scale garbage. And I think that's where CMOs of kind of always, I think you kind of mentioned this or started talking about is it has always been on the edge, right? A CMO tenure in historically has been, you know, what one to two years, maybe like for a reason.

Akande Davis 2:26

Well, absolutely. I mean, the tenure for a CMO short, it's incredibly high pressure. You know, you you have the weight of marketing, and oftentimes sales weighing on your shoulders. Um, it's been low control realistically, before like, I don't know, 2010, 2015. Uh you could run ads, spend money, and you're doing marketing, but there's not really a direct way to kind of attribute it. As time has gone on, that's changed a little bit, but for decades, that's kind of been the lay of the land. Um, with that in mind, now you're gonna be held accountable for pipeline, for brand awareness. Um, you don't own sales, you don't own the product. Uh, you're really gonna be responsible for all of those outcomes, despite despite not being the one who doesn't even own the data behind it.

Raja Walia 3:09

Yeah, and like I think for the first time in a while, actually, because when marketing automation first came out, I think like in 2010, uh, it put a spotlight on CMOs and marketing leadership just in general, right? Because we had technology that we could use to prove our worth. And somewhere along the way, it kind of dropped. And marketing leadership went right back into, or marketing, you know, just in general, went right back into proving elements that no one really cared about, right? Like it didn't impact revenue. It was this, it was that. But one of the things is like with AI, it's giving the market, it's giving marketing now, based off on what we learned with marketing automation, it's giving us the chance to actually lead and influence what a company's direction is and also kind of give us uh a better seat at the table. Like it's AI is going to let CMOs shape how the entire business interprets buying behavior. It's gonna change how we measure success, it's going to change how go-to-market decisions are made, but only if we step up and own it. Because we CMOs can't go down the same rabbit hole of Martech, where we said, well, here's a thousand qualified leads and sales said it was bad, and automatically CMO and marketing starts removing credibility. That's where all of these conversations about marketing operations come, RevOps, GTM ops, all of this was to say we are doing more than just sending emails. And I think that's what forces or it's going to force actually uh CMOs to kind of define how you are leveraging technology, right? So once again, AI makes assumptions operational. It's going to force your decisions on how leads are qualified, how the funnel is structured, what the fun, what the fun, what the what the funnel is structured for, uh, what messaging is being triggered, or what attribution model is trusted if an attribution model is trusted anyway. And I think all of this is going to determine where the budget's going to go and why. And once again, CMOs have the power right now, and it's an important role because someone needs to roll it out. Someone needs to understand how the strategy is going to mesh with the engine, you know, the architecture and the design of how we go to market with campaigns. And the CMO is going to be guiding that. And if we once again, this is kind of like our second at bat, like this is the second at bat for the CMOs to say we are more than just kind of this fluffy brand-oriented, oriented section or department. We also impact all of these things. Whether you're calling it RevOps or GTM ops or anything, it doesn't really matter, right? Like these are CMO. This is the C this is a CMO level call that is going to determine what the department is doing. And if you're not going to make them, someone else is going to. Either RevOps are going to do it, vendors are going to do it, or worse, it's just going to be whatever the default was. And AI is going to take it and make it substantially worse. And guess what? Who's under the who's under the microscope at that point again? It's the CMO.

Akande Davis 6:16

Yeah, and I mean, this might be a good opportunity to kind of speak as to why the average CMO tenure is just under two years, right? There was already a lot going on, and now it's gotten even more. I mean, Raja, we did some research on this as well with our partner demand metric. The CMO having a tenure of under two years, what do you think was the primary driver of that being such a short life cycle? And what why do you think CMOs have, in many respects, one of the hardest jobs in the C-suite?

Raja Walia 6:43

If you are in the C-suite, you have to question how technology is advancing and if those elements like scoring, like lifecycle, if they're still important or applicable. And I think the tenure fell to two years because, or under two years, is because as CMOs jumped, they tried to enable the same thing, right? Everyone has a story of a CMO starting at the company, and the first thing that they were doing was let's redo the website because website is important. Then let's do redo lead scoring. Let's do lead lifecycle. Those aren't strategic items. That doesn't help a company. What it helps operationally is the revenue operations or marketing operations teams to kind of perform better and say, hey, these are the things that we can work on. So why do you need scoring? Why do we need lifecycle? Is that something that you're just investing time in? Those are the questions a CMO or someone in the C-suite really should be asking, right? Like sales sales ask it all the time. Which accounts are we going to follow? Why are we following? Why are we following up on them? Did we make contact with them? Let's move on. Those are C-suite level decisions. I think CMOs just need to get better in 2026 at making those type of uh decisions.

Akande Davis 7:52

And yeah, and I mean if if those decisions aren't made, if those things haven't been touched or worked on in several years, that then becomes the rule book for everything else because AI is just taking that and running with it. Uh, great example. If your lead scoring hasn't been tweaked or adjusted and it's kind of been sitting there dormant for a while, well, it just became the rule book for your pipeline if you're leveraging AI to help drive it, right? Uh those kind of questions I think are important. And, you know, to your point about sales, if we're asking the question all the time, if we're being consistent about a thought process, then we don't have this vague thinking, right? We have something that we can actually scale. Instead of having ideas that we're trying to enable AI, we have actionable strategies. Um, and yeah, I think I think from a CMO standpoint, oftentimes the funnel stages are a little unclear. The rules around engagement and content are a little bit fuzzy, um, and it hasn't been challenged oftentimes. So with that, you're layering AI on top of it. And I think I think you said this at the beginning. We're scaling up bad behavior or we're scaling up something that doesn't already work.

Raja Walia 8:54

Yeah, and honestly, uh a CMO in 2026 is either going to fail or succeed. And uh succeeding means that we change the narrative of the CMO title within itself to something that is applicable like to someone, to someone, I want to say to something, but uh to a role that is defining how to how a company is being guided. And I think that's the very important part. If we treat uh or CMOs, if CMOs treat AI like a shiny new piece of technology or a dashboard instead of some sort of strategic initiative, you're going to automate and create confusion. You're going to automate confusion, you're going to create confusion. And the kicker is AI is going to be embedded in your systems. Those decisions are not going to be easily unwind. It's kind of like when we talk about how scaling up is substantially easier than scaling back, because once you've already scaled up, you have to remove items. Well, it's the same thing with AI, except it's a thousand times more, a thousand times faster. You know, you can't like you cannot soft launch your way out of through this. Like you either are going to lead it, understand it, or you're going to get exposed. And I think when we talk about like why the CMO role in 2026 is really important, is it's because of that. And what more CMOs and what and I want to say like what winning CMOs, if you want to define it, are actually doing. They're defining what marketing is accountable for. They're aligning with sales, they're aligning with finance, they're aligning with all of these different departments, and they're killing kind of like these outdated GTM motions because AI doesn't care about them, right? Life cycle and scoring was really good. And some companies might really need them. But for the majority of it, what did lead scoring solve? It said, I'm going to tell you all of the people that have engaged with your content. Well, now you have AI, uh, even if it's not true AI, and I always like to use my air quotes on that one, but you now you have a data processing AI tool that can tell you who's engaging with your content and who it doesn't need a score, it has all that relevant data, right? So why do you need a lead scoring model in 2026? It has to be a very clear-cut definition. And you know, we're setting these kind of guardrails up, but at the but winning CMOs don't ask what AI can do. They've already decided it. They're already saying this is what we are going to be doing with AI. These, this is where it you know fits in, and this is how we're going to use it to eliminate some of those outdated motions. And that's what winning CMOs or CMOs that are going to keep their tenure and keep, you know, I guess a job for longer than two years, but keep their tenure for more than two years and break that mold. That's what they're going to do.

Akande Davis 11:46

Yeah, uh AI is it should be getting treated by winning CMOs like a really smart, capable junior executive. They could do a ton, very, very uh mindful, very smart, but still needs direction. There's still that mentorship process in some respects when it comes to AI. They need to be led. AI also needs to be led. And they're not just taking, hey, RevOps, take this and run with it, or IT, you know, figure this out for me. They're actually leading the charge when it comes to AI. I think it's fair to say that winning CMOs are also going to be rewriting logic, the marketing logic behind their campaigns and not just sticking to what's always been done. Um, and they know that AI is not gonna fix misalignment. Instead, it's going to just weaponize it further. If something's not working, it's gonna make it more uh more hostile, if you will, to make it actually uh to make it actually work. But but Raja, if we're thinking about from a CMO standpoint, the CMO's importance, you know, and the title of this, why it's gonna be critical in 2026 for CMOs to to adopt and tackle AI very sensibly. What do you think is kind of the final or the the key takeaway from this entire conversation, if we were to summarize?

Raja Walia 12:52

Yeah, I mean it's like what MM said, right? Like this is your moment. You have one shot, you know, one chance. This is your leadership moment because we don't know when it's gonna come again. The last time this moment happened was in 2010 when marketing technology first took off. From there, it kind of the tenure of CMOs and the importance of CMOs increased and then it fell very sharply. Why? Because we didn't challenge any of the notions that once newer technology came out, so you got one chance, one moment. You know, I can't even remember the lyrics of that song at this point. I don't even know why. But at the same time, like, you know, it's it's kind of like what Eminem said. Like, this is your leadership. Well, that's why.

Akande Davis 13:30

Don't lose yourself.

Raja Walia 13:32

Don't lose yourself. This is your leadership moment. This is your moment, right? Um, and AI is not going to replace a CMO, right? Uh, but it will replace the ones who don't lead. And I think that's the biggest distinction that we need to understand is that if you are a CMO, you have this opportunity to really stop being looked at as some sort of fluffy department that doesn't really contribute to anything. And you're just really responsible for leads and working qualifies and form submissions and all of this stuff. And you have, you know, and you really have the ability as a CMO to be this, you know, strategic thinker that is enabling an engine at a company. I don't know how many more buzzwords I could put inside that sentence. Um, but at the same time, like that is what you have the ability to become. And if you don't, then you have to wait until the next big technology boom in order to redefine what that role looks like.

Akande Davis 14:28

Yeah, absolutely. I think it in 2026, it's not going to be about AI being more productive or driving productivity or driving creativity. It's going to be about CMOs taking ownership of what AI can do and getting the most out of it because they're making those strategic decisions that align with the company's goal. It's to take control of that uh in that respect. Um, so I mean, with that in mind though, CMOs, it's your year, you know, this is your moment. Don't lose it. Uh, and and obviously as we as we go into 2026, I think we're gonna be talking a lot more about this. A lot, a lot more about the C-suite role, a lot more about the different areas where businesses are gonna be impacted, whether that's from uh detailed customer journey and analytics or whether that's gonna be the impact of AI. I think we're, Roger, I think it's fair to say we want to focus more on what the C-suite, what's what SVPs could do, what strategy will look like in the new year, with marketing technology still considered, but focusing on that high-level initiative on where you can make the most impacts.

Raja Walia 15:27

Yeah, and like, you know, are you building a future-proof go-to-mark go-to-market motion? Like, is a how are you going to implement AI? What do we need to do? Because and here's the thing also, like, we've learned a lot in our, you know, as we've evolved, you know, as you know, podcasters in in our in our professional life. So it's one of those things that we've had the ability to talk to last year in 2025 with a lot of SVPs and a lot of C C-suite. So now it's just a matter of, hey, are you doing these things? Like we we talked about it, but something, some topic might help. So, you know, let's talk about it. Let's talk about what modern marketing leadership is really going to look like in 2026 and how AI is going to impact it. It's gonna be here. I hate it. I hate saying AI every you know, other word, but the reality is we have to take ownership of it in the marketing department and especially for CMOs.

Akande Davis 16:20

Well, thank you guys for so much for watching, listening to this episode of Call It RevOps. Be sure to tune in for the next one, and we'll see you next time.