CORE
September 2026
For some marketers, AI is primarily a productivity tool – a faster way to draft content, summarize research, or generate campaign ideas. The interaction is straightforward: enter a prompt, get an output.
Increasingly, however, AI is becoming less like a tool sitting on the desk and more like the electrical system running through the building. It’s being embedded into the workflows and decision-making structures that power modern marketing organizations.
And as AI moves beyond isolated use cases toward enterprise-wide adoption, it’s reshaping how teams understand markets, allocate resources, and execute campaigns.
That shift is a key theme of this year’s 20th Annual Tech CMO Roundtable. With the event quickly approaching, we wanted to share a preview of what attendees can expect, including how marketing leaders are putting AI to work today, where it’s creating meaningful impact, and what they’re learning along the way.
On Thursday, October 22, more than 100 senior B2B marketing and communications leaders will gather in Atlanta to share what’s working, compare notes on what’s changing, and learn from peers facing many of the same challenges.
This year, we’re putting practical AI front and center — with real-world applications, candid discussion and plenty of ideas to take back to your team.
That’s the question at the center of this year’s Roundtable.
Replacing our traditional keynote is a blast from the past: Show & Tell. Or, in this case, AI Show & Tell.
We’ve asked a group of respected CMOs and senior marketing leaders to bring real, hands-on examples of how they’re using AI inside their organizations today.
Not a vision for what AI might do someday. Not a vendor demo. Something they’re actually using in their daily, weekly, or monthly workflows.
And it doesn’t have to be complex. These aren’t necessarily solutions that require a team of developers, months of data cleanup, or a massive technology investment to get off the ground.
The goal is simple: give attendees a look at what their peers are testing, building, and putting into practice right now – and send them home with a few ideas worth using themselves.
The examples taking shape show just how varied practical AI adoption has become.
What’s notable is that these applications stretch well beyond content generation. They’re showing up in how marketers gather intelligence, find ideas, test messaging, manage information, and help buyers find their brands.
One marketing team is using AI to analyze competitor and partner news each week, compare those developments against its strategic marketing plan, and flag potential gaps or opportunities. The recommendations don’t automatically become action items. Some get rejected outright, while others have helped the team sharpen messaging or get ahead of competitive moves.
Another application scans internal conversations across email, collaboration tools, and shared files to surface ideas that subject matter experts may already be talking about – but that haven’t yet made their way into the content calendar.
We’ll also see how marketers are building AI-powered personas to pressure-test messaging and content against specific buyers, using AI to turn a day’s worth of email and internal messages into a focused executive briefing, and automating pieces of the content production process that would otherwise require repetitive manual work.
And as search continues to change, we’ll look at how marketers are approaching visibility inside AI-powered answer engines and what AEO and GEO look like in practice. Expect plenty of conversation around Search Everywhere Optimization and what visibility means as buyers increasingly find answers across traditional search, AI platforms, and other discovery channels.
These aren’t hypothetical use cases. They’re working examples of marketers finding very specific places where AI can save time, surface information teams might otherwise miss, and improve how work gets done within their organizations.
Is your website ready to be found, cited, and trusted by generative AI? Request a complimentary GEO Readiness Assessment from Arketi to gauge how prepared your brand is to show up in AI-driven search and discovery.
AI Show & Tell is only part of the conversation. After the presentations, attendees will break into our signature roundtable discussions to compare notes on the issues, opportunities, and challenges shaping B2B marketing right now.
No panels. No canned talking points. No microphones. Just candid conversations among senior marketing leaders about what’s working, what isn’t, and what they’re figuring out along the way. That’s what the Tech CMO Roundtable has always been about: creating a room where experienced marketers can learn from one another, challenge their own thinking, and leave with ideas they can actually put to work.
Twenty years in, that feels as important as ever. Marketing leaders are navigating AI, changing buyer behavior, new approaches to search, increased pressure to prove impact, and no shortage of new tools promising to make it all easier. No one has a picture-perfect playbook.
But putting more than 100 experienced marketers in a room to compare what they’re seeing, what they’re trying, and what they’re learning is a pretty good place to start. We can’t wait to see you there.
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