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Four Non-Obvious Predictions for 2026
Published 12 days ago • 6 min read
Crystal Ball Time
My wife loves it when I do my predictions every year because she says being wrong about something is good for my ego. In this case, she's probably right. Still, I do this exercise for a reason. The goal isn’t to predict technology. It’s to think through how people behave once the technology becomes unavoidable.
This year, my predictions are different. Instead of “more, more, more,” the word I keep coming back to for 2026 is constraint. Just go with me here.
And I’d love to hear your 2026 predictions. Hit reply and let me know. If yours makes the cut, I’ll share it in a future newsletter and send you a small gift.
and...
I'm taking next week off, so you'll get a fresh newsletter in your inbox on January 2nd. Happy New Year!
Enjoy, JP
P.S.: This newsletter is ad free because of a generous contribution from Lulu.Three years from now, the most profitable creators will be the ones who have direct audiences. A physical book helps you do that. If this thought resonates with you, Lulu will help.
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Four Non-Obvious Predictions for Creators, Media, and Marketing in 2026
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Every December, predictions flood the internet. Most of them are safe, obvious, and quickly forgotten. AI will get better. Platforms will change. Creators will use more tools. None of that helps anyone make better decisions.
Instead of predicting what technology will do next, these predictions focus on what changes when AI becomes cheap, invisible, and everywhere. That is when human behavior shifts. And those shifts matter far more than the tools themselves.
Here are four non-obvious predictions for 2026, especially for creators, marketers, and media companies trying to build something durable.
Prediction One: Email Becomes the Creator’s Most Valuable Asset…Again
Email will not regain importance because social media is broken or algorithms are unfair. It will become more valuable because it turns into the last reliable way for creators to reach verified humans.
By 2026, AI agents will routinely read content on our behalf, summarize newsletters, click links, and even take limited actions automatically (just wait until 2027). Platforms will struggle to separate genuine attention from automated behavior. Metrics built around consumption will steadily lose credibility.
Email will stand apart because it enables something AI cannot easily fake at scale without exposure and risk: response.
Simply having someone on an email list will no longer be the asset. And it won’t be open rate. What will matter is having someone willing to reply. Email stops functioning primarily as a reach channel and becomes a relationship ledger. It records who is paying attention and who is willing to engage directly with another human.
Creators who treat email as conversation rather than distribution will quietly build the most resilient audiences in the market.
Prediction Two: Reply Rate Becomes a Key Industry Standard
Once email is understood as a human channel, the metrics around it have to change. Open rates become noise. Click through rates become increasingly suspect.
The metric that matters is response.
By 2026, reply rate or a similar response-based measure becomes a primary KPI (key performance indicator) for serious creators and content marketers. My friends Robert Rose, Ann Handley and Chenell Basilio have all discussed this recently.
The definition is simple: replies divided by delivered emails, multiplied by one hundred.
Here’s an example:
You send a newsletter to 10,000 people. 9,500 emails are successfully delivered. 95 people hit reply and write back.
Reply Rate = 95 ÷ 9,500 × 100 Reply Rate = 1%
That means one out of every hundred people who received your email felt strongly enough to respond. Not click. Not skim. Respond.
In a world full of automated opens and AI-assisted clicks, that 1% tells you something real is happening.
What reply rate measures is not engagement in the abstract. It measures trust. A reply means someone felt something strongly enough to raise their hand, risk being seen, and assume you might listen.
That signal is categorically different from a click.
As a result, creators will start designing emails specifically to provoke replies. They will ask clearer questions, take principled positions, invite disagreement, and introduce intentional friction. An email that does not invite response will increasingly be viewed as unfinished.
Prediction Three: At Least Four Successful Creators Will Walk Away From Their Biggest Audiences
By 2026, we will see an unusual wave of successful, high-profile creators intentionally leaving the topics that made them famous. This will not be driven by failure, audience decline, or financial pressure.
It will happen because it will no longer make sense.
AI will make it easier than ever to continue producing the same type of content at scale. That efficiency will force an uncomfortable realization for creators who have already “won.” If a machine can do this as well as I can, why am I still doing it?
For many, the answer will not be economic. It will be linked to their identity.
The top tier of creators will already have enough money and leverage. When production friction disappears, purpose becomes the constraint. Continuing will start to feel more irresponsible than changing.
This shift will often be mislabeled as burnout, but it is the opposite. Creators will walk away from massive audiences, start over in unrelated categories, publish to small lists again, and trade reach for meaning. The internet will be confused. The creators will feel aligned.
Prediction Four: Apple and Disney Finally Admit Streaming Is Not a Standalone Business
I make this prediction every year, so feel free to roll your eyes. By 2026, either Apple acquires Disney outright, or the two form a partnership that looks indistinguishable from an acquisition. The logic is straightforward.
Streaming, on its own, no longer justifies the spend.
Disney Plus and Apple TV Plus share the same structural problem. They are well produced, brand safe, critically respected, and strategically small. Neither meaningfully moves the needle for its parent company. In a market defined by Netflix scale, HBO caliber, and accelerating consolidation, being “nice” is not a strategy.
The era of funding streaming as a prestige side project is ending. Content spend must rationalize. Differentiation is collapsing. Fewer, bigger players are inevitable.
Together, Apple and Disney solve each other’s problems. Disney brings irreplaceable IP and generational storytelling. Apple brings distribution power and balance sheet strength. Combined, they become the luxury streaming brand, positioned around family and prestige, and competing head to head with HBO rather than Netflix.
Separately, streaming remains marginal. Together, it becomes strategic.
The Real Throughline
These predictions are not ultimately about AI, email, creators, or media mergers. They are about constraint.
As AI removes friction from creation, the scarce resources become trust, belief, purpose, and alignment. Reach becomes cheap. Consistency becomes automated. Scale becomes table stakes.
What remains valuable is what makes us human. Replies instead of clicks. Relationships instead of reach. Alignment instead of optimization. Clear bets instead of endless options.
The old playbook was built for a world where effort was scarce. The next one is built for a world where meaning is.
By 2026, that distinction will separate the creators and companies who endure from those who simply keep publishing.
And...Silly Predictions
Bitcoin will surpass $200,000.
Elon Musk's net worth will close in on two trillion (after the IPO of SpaceX) h/t Paul Roetzer. (note...today Elon is worth almost $700 billion)
The Cleveland Browns will finish 9-8 and make the playoffs behind a new coach and general manager.
What's worth your time...
The Future of the Creator. I sat down with my friend Mitch Joel to discuss the future of content creation. A truly different kind of interview. Mitch always asks the best questions. Listen here.
The Hottest Job? Is, according to the WSJ, "corporate storytelling". Worth the read.
Until the next next Friday, keep building something that matters.
JP (Joe Pulizzi)
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