Roshanak Kavian
Co-Founder and CEO of Indigo Mars, a Los Angeles marketing agency.
Every autumn brings a wave of articles predicting the marketing trends of the coming year, and most of them are opinion dressed as forecast. This one is built differently. For each trend below, we point to a survey, a study, or a platform's own documentation, say what it found and who ran it, and tell you where the evidence is thin. The aim is to help a Los Angeles business owner decide where to put limited time and money going into 2027, without hype.
Two cautions apply throughout. First, several of the best data points come from companies that sell marketing software, which we flag. Second, nobody can predict the future, so treat "trend" as shorthand for "something the data shows is already changing."
Trend One: AI Answers Are Changing What Happens After a Search
The most rigorous independent data we found comes from the Pew Research Center, which tracked the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025 and analyzed 68,879 Google searches. Its findings are about Google only, and the data is now over a year old, so it describes the early picture rather than today's.
About 18 percent of the searches produced an AI summary.
When an AI summary appeared, users clicked a traditional result link in 8 percent of visits, compared with 15 percent when there was no summary.
Users clicked a link inside the AI summary itself in about 1 percent of visits.
Visits with a summary ended the browsing session 26 percent of the time, against 16 percent without one.
Longer, question-style searches were far more likely to trigger a summary: 60 percent of question-form searches, and 53 percent of searches of ten or more words, versus 8 percent of one- or two-word searches.
Pew notes these are associations, not proof that summaries cause the drop, and that clicks were inferred from the next page visited. Still, the pattern is consistent and the logic is plain: when an answer appears on the results page, fewer people click through.
What it means for a local business. The searches most likely to trigger summaries are the detailed questions customers ask while deciding, such as "how much does it cost" or "what should I look for in a dentist." If your page is the one an answer draws on, you may gain visibility without a click. If it is not, you are absent from the moment. This is the central reason to write clear, direct answers, covered in our AI optimization guide. Google's own documentation says nothing special is needed beyond being indexed, eligible to show a snippet, and genuinely helpful, so there is no need to buy a trick.
Trend Two: Local Discovery Is Fragmenting, and AI Tools Are Now a Major Source
BrightLocal, a local SEO software company, publishes an annual consumer survey. Its February 2026 edition surveyed 1,002 US adults through SurveyMonkey. The company sells related software, and a survey of this size has a meaningful margin of error, but it is one of the few sources tracking how consumers find local businesses year over year.
The share using ChatGPT and other generative AI for local recommendations rose from 6 percent in 2025 to 45 percent in 2026, making it the third most used source behind Facebook and Google.
Use of Google for local reviews fell from 83 to 71 percent, while Apple Maps use nearly doubled, from 14 to 27 percent.
42 percent said they trust AI platforms about as much as traditional reviews for local recommendations.
A jump from 6 to 45 percent in a year is large enough to deserve skepticism about what exactly was measured, since respondents may count any contact with an AI feature. But the direction agrees with what we see elsewhere: customers now check several places before choosing, and not all of them are Google.
What it means. Consistency matters more when more systems are reading your information. The same name, address, hours, and descriptions should appear on your website, your Google profile, Apple Maps, and the directories customers use. An incomplete Apple Maps listing, which many businesses have never claimed, is now a more realistic gap than it was two years ago.
Trend Three: The Bar for Reviews Keeps Rising
The same BrightLocal survey shows customers getting pickier, and the numbers are specific.
97 percent of consumers read reviews for local businesses, and 41 percent say they always do, up from 29 percent the year before.
68 percent require a rating of at least four stars, up from 55 percent. 31 percent will only use a business rated 4.5 or higher, up from 17 percent.
74 percent only consider reviews from the last three months.
47 percent will not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews.
80 percent say they are likely to use a business that responds to all its reviews.
The practical message is that a good average rating is no longer enough. Volume, recency, and visible responses all count, which is why a steady, honest process for asking every satisfied customer matters more than an occasional push. We go deeper on thresholds in The Star Rating Threshold Nobody Tells You About. If you are in a category where customers are cautious, such as medical or legal services, treat this as a priority.
Trend Four: Short-Form Video Leads on Marketers' Own ROI Ratings
HubSpot's 2026 State of Marketing report draws on a survey of more than 1,500 marketers. HubSpot sells marketing software, the page does not state fieldwork dates or sampling method, and the respondents are marketers across many industries and company sizes, not local service businesses. With those limits, the findings are useful as a read on professional sentiment.
Marketers rated short-form video as the content format with the best return, at 48.6 percent, well ahead of long-form video (28.6 percent), live streaming (25.1 percent), user-generated content (24 percent), and blog posts (22.3 percent).
Paid social (25.9 percent) and organic social (23.5 percent) topped the channel ratings for impact.
These are perceptions of ROI, not measured returns, and what works for a national brand may not for a neighborhood business. Still, it supports a reasonable conclusion: for visual, appearance-based businesses, short video showing real work and real people is worth testing. For businesses whose results cannot be photographed, the case is weaker, a distinction we explain in our guide to social media for local businesses.
Trend Five: More Budget, More Scrutiny, and Measurement Still Unsolved
The same HubSpot survey describes a tension that most owners will recognize.
79.2 percent of marketers expected at least a slight budget increase in 2026, yet 73 percent said their budget faces more scrutiny than before.
The most common challenge was measuring marketing ROI, cited by 33 percent.
Only 65 percent said they have high-quality audience data.
The largest planned increases were in AI chatbots, paid social, video, and content marketing, while the largest planned decreases were in physical ads, direct mail, and print.
The takeaway is not to spend more. It is to be able to show what the spending produced. A simple, honest system, such as tracking calls and form submissions by source and asking each new customer how they found you, beats an elaborate dashboard. For what services cost, see What Marketing Actually Costs for a Los Angeles Small Business in 2026.
Trend Six: AI Is Now Standard in Marketing Production, and Generic Output Is the Risk
In the same survey, 86.4 percent of marketing teams said they use AI in at least a few areas, with content creation the most common heavy use (42.5 percent). About two thirds said it improved productivity slightly or moderately, and about a quarter said significantly.
The implication for a small business is double-edged. AI can cut the time needed to draft and edit, which helps a lean team keep a content schedule going. But when everyone uses the same tools, undifferentiated content floods every channel. What stays scarce is real experience: your photos, your customers' stories, your specific local knowledge, and your honest opinions. Use AI for the drafting and the busywork. Supply the substance yourself. How to Build a Content Marketing Strategy for Your Business shows how to build a sustainable process around that.
Trend Seven: Ads Are Arriving Inside AI Assistants
This is the fastest-moving item and the one with the weakest evidence, so treat it carefully. According to reporting summarized by marketing agencies, OpenAI began showing ads in ChatGPT in the US on February 9, 2026, to logged-in adults on its Free and Go tiers, with paid tiers ad-free, and opened a self-serve Ads Manager in beta on May 5 with cost-per-click bidding added. One agency's ledger says availability had expanded to dozens of countries by October. Reported prices, such as a $60 CPM and a $200,000 minimum during the early test, and $3 to $5 per click later, are second-hand figures that have not been confirmed by a primary source we could read, and the minimums have reportedly dropped.
Two honest observations. First, OpenAI is reported to claim more than 100,000 advertisers, so it is hard to argue that competition in this channel is still negligible. Second, we have no data on how this performs for a local service business, and the single-advertiser results circulating online are anecdotes. A sensible approach for most local businesses is to watch, learn the format, and test with a small budget only after your organic foundations are solid. Our comparison of ChatGPT ads and Google Ads covers the early differences.
Things Often Called Trends That the Evidence Does Not Support
Special files or markup for AI. Google's documentation for its AI features says none are needed. We have seen no solid evidence that other special files change what other systems show.
Guaranteed AI ranking. Research on repeated runs shows AI recommendation lists vary enormously from one run to the next, so promises of a fixed position are not credible. See our comparison of AI visibility tools for the study.
"SEO is dead." Search is still where the infrastructure sits, and the basics help every channel. What is changing is where the reward appears.
Being everywhere. The surveys describe marketers adding channels, but a small team gets more from doing one or two well.
What to Do With This in 2027: A Short Priority List
Fix the foundation. Complete and accurate Google and Apple Maps listings, consistent facts everywhere, and a website that answers real questions in plain words near the top of each page.
Make reviews a system. Ask every satisfied customer, aim for steady recent reviews, and reply to all of them.
Write direct answers. Pages built around the longer, question-style searches most likely to trigger AI summaries.
Test short video if your work is visual. Real work, real people, a modest steady cadence.
Track results you can act on. Calls, forms, and how new customers found you.
Check how AI tools describe you monthly, by hand first, and correct errors at the source.
Watch ads in AI assistants, and test small only after the basics work.
The sequence for turning this into a plan is in The 90-Day AI Visibility Action Plan for a Los Angeles Business.
Limits of This Analysis
The sources are a mix of independent research and company-run surveys, from different dates, covering different populations. Pew's data is from early 2025 and covers Google only. BrightLocal's and HubSpot's come from companies that sell related software. None isolates Los Angeles. Treat the numbers as directional, expect change, and verify anything important against current sources before acting on it.
Sources
Want help deciding which of these actually matter for your business? Get in touch and we'll give you a straight answer.
