The Catholic Take on Meltwater’s 15 Trends
Meltwater, the behemoth, has released their 15 marketing trends everyone “needs” to know for 2026.
Do they know what they’re talking about?
What about their claims and predictions?
And what is the Catholic take? Here we’ll draw from the institution that has weathered more trends than anyone or anything else: the Catholic Church.
Trend #1: AI Search Optimization Moves Center Stage
Well, yes. I mean, this one I firmly believe is changing the internet at an accelerated rate.
The report even predicts that “by 2028 AI-powered search will displace conventional web search as the primary discovery channel for consumers.” Definitely. I think it might happen sooner.
Answer engines are simply too good at solving problems, and they’ll only improve as we search for products, services, news, entertainment, places, information, and, well, answers.
Just as important as SEO? More and more important every day. I’ll go as far as saying that traditional search will be a museum piece before this decade is out.
The Catholic Take
Of course, the Church doesn’t care whether SEO or AEO reigns supreme. She cares about where we get our answers and what those answers are.
The internet, whether in your glasses, your palm, or your brain, will soon be a virtual assistant, as Zuckerberg envisioned. It will greet you, remind you, lay out your routine and schedule, and offer its superior synthesis and analysis of whatever question or request you make of it.
It’s coming. The movie is coming. Except it’s not a movie!
The Church wants us to stay salty. We must be cautious and keep technology in its place. We can’t just take what our personalized AI tells us as Gospel. There is only God’s Truth. Everything else is bias. And bias can be programmed. We all wish the internet would just tell us the Truth, but it’s the internet, so many times, it won’t.
That means it will always be on us to vet what our senses experience. God’s Word remains the arbiter of Truth. Fact checking is real. No matter the technology “assisting” (or assimilating) us, the virtue of prudence urges us to double and triple check every answer we’re given.
Trend #2: LLM Reputation Management Becomes a Discipline
When a brand or person is searched through AI engines, what the Large Language Model (LLM) says about you counts. Increasingly. It’s become the first impression.
AI can and will always make mistakes, but humans are often imprudent and believe whatever we read, see, or hear first.
Meltwater says a new discipline is emerging: the management of a brand’s reputation on LLMs. It means that, as what AI says about me grows more valuable and consequential, I’m going to need to hire people to manage perception in LLMs.
It’s not about managing what the internet says about me. Just what the sources AI chooses say.
Clout. It comes down to domain authority and whatever criteria for choosing references are built into the engine.
The Catholic Take
“What is therefore needed in our time is an active and imaginative engagement of the media by the Church” (Pope St. John Paul II, 35th World Communications Day).
That means the Church needs to show up in LLMs for any question related to the Body of Christ, questions of faith, God, purpose, and many other areas. That won’t happen unless the Church increases its authority online with the best digital content that AI cannot ignore.
Trend #3: From Tools to Teammates: Agentic Workflows
Meltwater’s report says, “AI is evolving from simple, task-level helpers into full-fledged teammates.”
It’s the rise of agentic AI—“conversational interfaces that condense hours of work into a few prompts, written in plain English.”
Helpful? In a way. Productive? Very. Profitable? Extremely.
But the car hasn’t solved people’s happiness even though it changed everything. The printing press didn’t either. The computer and the web are things we can’t live without, yet misery is still going.
What’s my point?
Everything has its place.
The Catholic Take
There is strong caution on this point.
Humans need work. We are not made to be idle, slothful, or lazy. We’re created to work by the sweat of the brow, hands in the soil, creating, and sharing in creation.
“We were created with a vocation to work.” (Pope Francis, Laudato Si, 128)
Automation is not evil unless it replaces labor that belongs to us. We can’t lift tons of rock. So we build machines.
We could never keep up with global demand. So we build automations that are faster and less prone to error; they certainly won’t get hungry or tired.
AI has thrown back into the spotlight the debate over the perceived ever-shrinking jobs that humans can do. If everything is automated and driven by AI, are there enough “supervisor” jobs?
Should AI be the plumbers, doctors, lawyers, contractors, and street sweepers? What does that leave? Entertainers and creators? No, AI is there, too. Politicians? Maybe, funny enough, politicians, the most hated humans, will always be human. ☠️
“Work constitutes a fundamental dimension of man’s existence on earth.” (Pope St. John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, 4)
Trend #4: Mis/Disinformation Resilience Is Table Stakes
Finally, a non-AI trend.
This one is actually straightforward. Fakery, trickery, slander, libel, and misdirection are everywhere, aided by bad actors and temptation.
Misinformation will increase. It will come for you. Don’t think you’re immune. Don’t presume you’ll be spared. Be ready. Not with panic or deception. But with poise.
The Catholic Take
All misinformation, especially purposeful, is wrong. Those who promote it will be answerable to God, who knows and searches the deepest reasons, fears, and intentions we have.
Again, prudence. Where we trod. Who we engage. Thinking more than reacting. Forming our consciences correctly. These are important principles that should shape our communications.
Tell the Truth. Enough said.
Trend #5: Creator Commerce Shifts from Sponsorships to Performance
Influencers who don’t actually use or like what they’re promoting are especially frustrating to me.
Influencer marketing and creator partnerships are evolving, rooted in ongoing compensation debates, reputation, demands, and… basically where the money goes.
Performance is a good metric. Brands should pay for what works. We’ve been treated to ads cluttered with influencers who couldn’t care less about what they’re selling.
But is performance enough? The best performance comes (or should come) from authentic value. But that’s on us, consumers, as much as the brands. If we buy without thinking, then that appears to be performance, and authenticity be damned.
For consumers, if we stick to our principles and only buy what’s good for us from real partnerships forged in justice, there’s a real difference to be made.
For brands and creators, performance should drive partnerships and which creators are interesting to work with. At a deeper level, that should mean that brands and creators actually value their audiences and stick to partnerships that are authentic to them.
The Catholic Take
Honesty. We need it in marketing.
Influencers, stick to your lane of influence.
Many celebrities and influencers these days are young and don’t know the answers to life’s big questions and how to live, despite continually throwing incoherent opinions, and useless products, out to millions of vacant minds and hurting hearts.
Customers, discern before being influenced. We need to think more because giving them power over us.
Also, we all need less stuff.
The Church calls us, the consumers, to study up, be detached from material wealth, and prioritize eternal things. It calls brands and creators to not put profit ahead of value.
“What is wrong is a style of life…which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order to spend life in enjoyment as an end in itself.” (Pope St. John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 36)
Trend #6: Reddit Communities Drive Decisions
Humans need humans. It will always be true. We are communal.
Reddit captured that and has not let up in twenty years. Before we buy, we think. Or at least we should. Before we think, we talk to others. We see what others think.
Reviews have established themselves as the way we decide. Reviews of products, services, places, religions, decisions, and even life itself.
Build up reviews. Be open to them—the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The Catholic Take
The Church understands, better than anyone else, the human condition. She knows we need each other on our journey.
Church institutions should not be afraid of reviews either.
The Church needs to be active in discussions. Everything is happening there. Souls are formed, deformed, changed, broken, and remade.
Conversation is vital. Catholics and Catholic institutions must participate.
Trend #7: Personalization at Scale Is Finally Practical
Personalization is the ballgame in marketing. If you can personalize your brand to a need, personalize your message to an audience, and personalize your journey to a preference, you’ve won.
That’s where we succeed. We solve a problem for an audience, and the entire experience is suited to that persona. (I like persona rather than bucket, tribe, archetype, category, profile, demographic, vertical, sector, target, segment, cohort, customer, or consumer. It keeps it… personal.)
Meltwater is correct in that personalization will get easier and should remain the priority.
But personalization and scale are suspicious bedfellows. Growth, almost by default, means less personalization, as we are grouped in ever-expanding and diluted “buckets.” (See, who wants to be a bucket?)
So beware of growth as the ultimate end. Solving a real problem must remain the measure of success.
Notice that the name of the trend includes the word, “finally.”
Well it shouldn’t be finally. It’s always been practical even if it limits your growth. Maybe it SHOULD limit your growth. Maybe you don’t need to be the biggest. You just need to be the most effective.
The Catholic Take
As a Catholic, we go deeper. (We always go deeper) Respect for human dignity is paramount.
Personalization was always the best approach. But we tend to be tempted by fame and fortune and so we grow and ditch personalization when we don’t need it anymore.
God, who is greater than the biggest out there, is a personal God. He does not “outgrow” us. He’s not too important to give us a hug and address our needs.
People are not spreadsheet cells, numbers, or margins. We are flesh-and-blood, made-in-God’s-image persons.
When brands are small, they tend to respect human dignity. Sometimes just because they need us. But with success comes that temptation to see dollar signs instead of human hearts and needs.
If you can scale and retain a profound reverence for the human person, you will reach the heights of a Godly business!
Trend #8: Social SEO Is the New Top-of-Funnel
Just like with trend #1, this one is an easy affirmation. Social media is all about search. The “doom scrolling” experiment has taught users, brands, and even governments that algorithms are problematic.
So instead of scrolling through slop, laughter, and tears, we search for value. We can still end up feeding addictions and wasting our lives, but search is more active and tailored.
“24 percent of people already prefer to use social media platforms over Google for search queries.” The question now is how will AI, the evolving browser, social, and traditional search all converge.
Remember that super virtual AI assistant Zuckerberg salivates over? I’m sure that assistant will be able to handle your “search,” showing you social posts, articles, news, Reddit threads, and who knows what else simultaneously so you can choose what you want.
The Catholic Take
Be on social! Period. If people are asking on social, the Church and Catholics need to answer on social.
And don’t forget to cultivate a clear line of invitation from the feed to the pew!
Trend #9: Unified Cross-Channel Measurement
“Vanity metrics just won’t cut the mustard… anymore.” Love it.
Down with vanity. Anyway, I digress.
Just as we should be measuring influencers and agencies by valuable performance metrics, we should measure ourselves the same way.
A unified dashboard, like the Custom Results Dashboard that Yellow Line Digital provides, is ideal for looking at all digital efforts and discerning whether the results are worth the effort.
The humble marketer has to always be ready and willing to cut one underperforming tactic and try another.
The Catholic Take
The biggest challenge in the Catholic space is that too few of us are looking at data in the first place. We need more emphasis on dashboards and data and a conviction that data is critical to strategy and execution.
With one voice, Catholic marketers should push for more sophisticated reporting. We’re still relying heavily on hearsay and emotional reactions in the hall or from journalists.
That isn’t the whole picture. We have to bake the results of our ads, posts, websites, emails, and more into our communications decisions. Measuring results is not optional.
Trend #10: Multi-Platform Engagement as the Norm
“Consumers don’t experience campaigns in silos, they move fluidly across TikTok, Threads, Instagram, YouTube, and more, so you need to give them a consistent, joined-up picture of your brand, wherever they encounter it.”
I mean, that says it all. But it’s kind of old news. People have been moving fluidly from one channel to another for years.
Meltwater is pushing integrated storytelling, which is a fancy way of saying: Be relevant and engaging across platforms.
Here’s a caveat. People are further transforming channels they use into specialists. I don’t know if this is the best analogy, but pretend TikTok is my gossip, Instagram is my best friend, Facebook groups are my hangout spot, and YouTube is my study buddy.
Each channel has an expectation, and that fundamentally comes down to the job we want our channels to get done.
The Catholic Take
We tend to group all social media together, but this is a major mistake. Social media has evolved enough to have niche needs they fill and specific use cases. We simply don’t go everywhere for the same thing.
Personas, based on interests, fears, age, geography, social circles, convictions, etc., use one channel to fill one hole in their lives and then turn around and use a different channel for a different hole.
Catholic institutions and marketers must understand this and align the right expectation, channel behavior, and persona to the value they offer and the action they want.
Trend #11: Video Everywhere: Short, Long, Live, Shoppable
I’m going to keep this one short and just say: 1000%!
If you’re not doing video, you either are a genius and video just doesn’t apply to—no, no, you have to do video if you’re in marketing. There is no other way.
The Catholic Take
The Church must evangelize and communicate. Not doing video is like St. Paul not being St. Paul.
Trend #12: Create Relevance: From Trendjacking to Trend-Shaping
“Audiences… increasingly reward originality and authenticity.”
Don’t jump on the trends, create them. How?
Hire creative people. Hire young people. Give them the freedom to create and imagine. There will always be some reining in, but a good employee or agency will understand your brand well enough without losing creative freedom.
Take risks. Be vulnerable. It might be scary to let truly original content out the door. It might not work the first time. Stick with it. Be patient.
Stay on brand and on message and on point with the problem you solve for the audience. But then let the creative process shape something unexpected.
The Catholic Take
“Effective communication… must involve the imagination” (Pope Benedict XVI, 47th World Communications Day).
Preach it, Papa!
Trend #13: Alternative Social Platforms Are Rising, and Splintering
Another trend that is rather old but still relevant.
Fewer people remember when there weren’t thousands of channels on TV.
At the turn of the century, there were a handful of social media networks.
Now we have as many podcasts, blogs, and clubs as we have species of insects.
Let’s be careful. We don’t need to be on every channel. We need to be where we can improve the lives of audiences. Many of us hate when brands and ads invade our spaces.
Meltwater is recommending brands spend money and time being everywhere and figuring out where they shouldn’t be.
I think we can figure that out without creating profiles and setting up large task forces. An audit, like our Health Check, can tell you whether Bluesky or Nostr or Threads or Truth Social or Mastodon or Substack is a good fit for your audience and value proposition.
The Catholic Take
The Church reminds us that we need to be social and warns us against tribalism.
“Social networks can facilitate relationships and promote the good of society, but they can also lead to further polarization and division between individuals and groups.” (Pope Francis, 50th World Communications Day)
The splintering of social networks is a reflection of a culture that preaches unity but in practice can’t stand slight disagreements.
While marketers figure out where audiences are and how to engage them truthfully, we need to take a step back and start reversing the trend of smaller and more numerous echo chambers.
Having more social networks isn’t inherently bad. But the motivation to be deaf and blind to anything outside my comfort zone is.
Trend #14: Social Customer Care Is Critical for Brand Reputation
“Break down silos between customer support and social teams.”
Respond faster. Improve customer service.
I’m all about this if it is, indeed, a trend. Customer service often goes out the window on the heels of success. Ironic. But maybe newer companies and younger managers won’t let that happen as they mature from energetic entrepreneurs to responsible managers.
The Catholic Take
The Church, institutionally, has been severely lacking in its online “customer service” of late. In America, the Church’s digital presence has been slow to answer, vague, distant, or absent altogether.
For marketers working with the Church, we need to help get customer service back up to the top of the list. That means evangelization, not just putting out fires. We need to accompany by quickly responding to crises, problems, questions, doubts, and pain with comfort, resources, connections, answers, and prayer!
Trend #15: The Rise of AI-Generated Virtual Influencers
“For better or worse, many influencers have always represented an idealised, picture-perfect version of life.”
It’s for worse. Definitely for worse. The saints represent the best way to live, and they talk about suffering all the time, for crying out loud.
“It makes sense that virtual influencers are booming.” (So all that authenticity talk is just trendy?)
No. No, it doesn’t. The only reason fake people are influencing real people is because our culture is so thoroughly lost that it will turn to AI with its deepest longings, secrets, and troubles.
I completely disagree with Meltwater on this last trend. This trend needs to die. We should not be propping up this trend or partnering with it or pretending it’s okay.
The Catholic Take
People need God. And people need other people.
For the Church, online work matters more than ever if the alternative is AI relationships!
Let’s put ourselves and our lives in the hands of God and each other, not AI, and certainly not virtual influencers.
Prediction #1: Detect Narratives AND Coordination to Win Trust
“Anyone can orchestrate sophisticated disinformation campaigns capable of undermining a brand’s reputation within hours.”
It’s getting harder to tell what’s real. Brands are vulnerable to AI-fueled widespread false narratives sinking reputations and trust.
Dan Brahmy urges us not to panic. Here’s how: Use sophisticated tools to fight other sophisticated tools.
But let’s go deeper.
The Catholic Take
Brands are vulnerable not because of their incomplete tools suite, but because they believe in error. They virtue signal, but virtue is foreign to them. They do not uphold the dignity of the human person internally or externally.
You can’t fake real relationships and trust. Your audience will stick with you if that is established.
Marketers should be grounded in patience and humility. Fight the battles worth fighting. Lead with principles that speak the truth. Don’t worry about lies and slop.
Trust with your audience isn’t the most valuable asset; doing what’s right is.
Prediction #2: Increasing Multi-Modal Social Content
“We can expect to see at least twice as much video based content over static images and text.” Danny Gardner
The Catholic Take
If that is true, the Church must make 2026 the year we aren’t left behind. The Church, through her dioceses, parishes, and ministries, must produce 3x as many videos as last year. (And if you made 0 videos, then it’s 4x.) 🤔
Let’s start overtaking the secular world. And not just in volume. In creativity.
Skits, question and answer, hot takes, news commentary, UGC, explainers, myth busters, and man on the street.
No more slow-mo, stock music pitches for the Church.
We need bold imagination. People are hungry for the truth. The what, the why, and the how. Lean into that.
P.S. Is a Jubilee Year of Digital Evangelization possible?
Prediction #3: Data Quality Becomes the New AI Currency
“Is your data AI and research ready?” Well, there are “new model governance systems that give you precise measurement of AI model accuracy on your own data.”
“The result: hallucination-free ‘enterprise-ready’ genAI output as well as more effective use of this unstructured social media and voice of customer data into new areas like predictive reputation and brand intelligence.”
Rob Key’s prediction has a lot of fancy words and very little substance. Or maybe I just don’t understand.
Data is important. The right data. But his prediction is basically, ‘AI is more important, so use it (and my company) to help you with AI.’
Anybody pitching genAI is obviously selling something and potentially hasn’t thought through the consequences of genAI.
On a positive note, AI will help with data, from gathering to analysis to storytelling. Done correctly, it will cut out more fluff and expose the truth.
The Catholic Take
Those evangelizing must not be afraid of data and the tools to get it. And we must always approach our efforts with a critical eye so that pride doesn’t creep in and spoil what is truly working.
Prediction #4: PR Is the New Fuel for Generative AI
“In 2026, brand reputation will be increasingly shaped not by what people search for, but by what AI answers.” I happen to agree with Melanie Klausner wholeheartedly.
AI engines are becoming the gateways to information. We’re moving from content to citations.
She makes the wonderful point that communicators need to publish with the intent to be machine-cited.
The Catholic Take
If the Church wishes to be relevant and increase her impact on the world, she must be a priority for AI engines.
Is that possible given the whims of their human masters? I think it is. God is stronger than AI, after all.
A word of warning to all of us:
We’re playing the game right now. Melanie talks about “feeding the AI ecosystem.”
That’s the crux right now. We sort of have to. But let’s be careful not to create another monster, like slavery and nuclear weapons before it. The more we feed these machines we think are good for our way of life, the more they seek to supplant the law of God.
Prediction #5: Monitor AI the Way You Monitor Media
Billions of conversations with chatbots are happening, says Will Swape. He’s right.
The Catholic Take
But instead of just monitoring them for audience sentiment, brand reputation, behavior shifts, etc., we Catholic marketers can be at the forefront of human conversations. AI is replacing human connection, and many are blind to it.
We need to promote the power of human connection, as ridiculous as that is to say. Monitor AI conversations, yes. But the goal is deeper AI connections; the goal is better human connection.
We may already be dependent on AI and this should give us great pause.
Prediction #6: Authentic Video Will Win Hearts and Algorithms
Greg Barta throws around buzzwords like “authenticity” and “video.” But he’s right!
“Audiences are tuning out polished, overly produced video storytelling.”
The Catholic Take
Jump on the bandwagon of raw, vulnerable storytelling. Reveal your weaknesses and setbacks. That’s authentic. You’re not perfect, and your marketing shouldn’t make you out to be. It’s not all success and sunsets. Life is hard. Faith is hard. No budget. No lights. Just a phone camera and a story.
Stop being afraid of what your imperfections and mistakes will do to your bottom line and evangelization. We’re all human. Let’s start acting like it.
I hope you enjoyed this analysis of the big marketing trends and predictions of 2026. The Catholic take is critically needed, so let’s work together to change marketing and our culture.
Join the conversation! Shoot me an email at mconnors@yellowlinedigital.com and follow us on LinkedIn.
