As digital and AI technologies evolve, businesses are under increasing pressure to move with them and deliver seamless, personalized experiences across multiple channels.
Enter Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs), solutions designed to orchestrate content, data, and interactions for maximum impact.
AI-driven personalization, headless CMS architectures, and omnichannel engagement are among the latest trends transforming the industry.
With no-code customization and AI-powered analytics enhancing agility, the future of digital experiences is more dynamic – but also more complicated – than ever.
This roundtable unpicks the latest advancements shaping DXPs and what innovations lie ahead for brands looking to stay ahead of the curve.
Our industry experts this month include:
- Kemberly Gong, VP of Product Marketing at Contentful
- Sara Faatz, Director of Technology Community Relations at Progress
- Guy Hellier, VP of Product Management at OpenText
- Mo Cherif, VP of AI & Innovation at Sitecore
- Mike MacAuley, GM of Liferay
- Tara Corey, SVP of Marketing at Optimizely
- Conor Egan, SVP of Product at Contentstack
The Biggest Trends Currently Transforming the DXP Market
Rise of GenAI
Gong: The DXP market was defined to label the struggle that every business has: creating marketing that resonates with customers.
And whether you call it a trend or a fundamental paradigm shift, there’s no doubt that Generative AI is already changing how brands create content and digital experiences.
Marketing teams struggle with content chaos – creating content, managing it, personalizing it, optimizing, and delivering it. Add in scaling across regions and languages, and it’s clear that many resource-constrained marketing teams struggle to create all the assets they need to be effective.
With Generative AI, teams can create, manage, translate, and regionalise content at low or no cost. Organizations that learn to harness the power of Generative AI will have a considerable advantage: more personalized experiences and deeper engagement with consumers will result in increased ROI.
Predictive AI
Faatz: Not surprisingly, AI is the trend transforming the DXP market in a number of ways.
First, Predictive AI is enabling marketers to identify high/medium/low segments for conversions, helping to refine audience segmentation and activate users with a high likelihood to convert via targeted messaging and campaigns.
Generative AI is changing the way content is created and classified and helping to hone content performance by increasing discoverability, reusability, and relevance. And Agentic AI has the ability to provide a hyper-personalized experience to the user, allowing them to dictate the way they interact with the digital experience.
Alone, each of these implementations of AI is evolutionary – together, they are transformative. And while the impact AI has on the DXP market is significant, equally important is the influence the technology has on end-user behavior.
Answer Engine Optimization
Hellier: Why should Chat GPT provide better answers to customer questions than your .com presence? Brands need a layered approach that maximizes customer and brand value in the major GPT platforms but also creates unique value in their owned experiences.
Web experiences cannot remain as digital brochures. AI enables enterprises to provide powerful outcomes, helping customers understand and succeed in the use of a brand’s products and services.
The digital experience is an inherent part of unified engagement management. Business users (and digital workers) require a holistic approach to managing how customers engage with a brand, especially for post-acquisition customer journeys
Unifying Siloed Systems
Cherif: As the excitement around agentic AI grew, many organizations rushed to embed this emerging technology into DXP solutions.
However, this rapid adoption led to siloed workflows and fragmented proof of concepts, consisting of disparate AI agents unable to communicate with one another.
Now, the focus has shifted to unifying these siloed systems and reintroducing humans-in-the-loop to drive efficiency, enhance workflows, and improve governance.
This trend is changing the way marketers approach AI integration for the better, moving from fragmented experimentation to structured, strategic deployment.
Agentic AI
MacAuley: The next big trend to shape the DXP market will undoubtedly be agentic AI, technology that is focused on making decisions and does not require direct human oversight.
Unlike generative AI, which requires prompting, agentic AI essentially has autonomy to make and take decisions on its own.
For DXPs like Liferay, this trend is of real interest, with many looking for ways to put this technology into practice across real-world use cases.
If the potential of agentic AI is to be realized, the DXP market must first create sites and services to allow actions to be carried out in the real world.
The next frontier is agent-to-agent communication, where agentic systems on both sides engage directly to resolve queries, execute transactions, and deliver outcomes with minimal human intervention.
Personalized Content
Corey: One of the most important shifts we’re seeing in the DXP market is a move away from generic, one-size-fits-all experiences.
Brands are realizing that sticking to safe, templated content can lead to what some call “blandification”, a loss of brand identity and customer connection.
Today’s consumers expect to be treated as individuals, and traditional rule-based personalization just can’t keep up.
For me, the solution lies in AI that can adapt in real time, learning from how customers actually interact and tailoring content to match.
Automation
AI Integration
Egan: A major trend reshaping the DXP market is the integration of AI and automation to drive real-time, personalized content experiences.
As customer expectations grow, brands must deliver relevant interactions across multiple channels.
AI capabilities like predictive analytics, dynamic content generation, and automated segmentation are empowering teams to craft tailored journeys at scale while reducing manual effort.
At Contentstack, we’re seeing businesses use AI across the content lifecycle, from creation to delivery, to boost engagement and efficiency.
The New Tools Transforming DXP Solutions
Enhanced API-First Architecture
Gong: Generative AI holds so much promise to help companies in all facets of their business, including scaling content creation, automating workflows, building apps, and integrating technologies at speeds never seen before. But Generative AI is also evolving rapidly, with no one technology in the pole position for long.
The winners in the DXP market will balance a composable, API-first architecture with intuitive, drag-and-drop tooling that lets any user move fast and with confidence.
This will give companies the flexibility to integrate the newest and most effective technology at any point in time and adapt as the market changes.
AI-Native Tools
Faatz: According to the latest State of Martech report, there are more than 15K pieces of marketing technology on the market today.
Choosing just one tool is hard, as I personally believe technology decisions should be based on best of need as opposed to best of breed. That said (and based on my previous answer, this likely won’t come as a surprise), AI-native tools are having the most significant impact on DXP solutions.
According to the report, AI-native tools now dominate new entrants, accounting for 77% of new martech solutions. These tools are primarily leveraged for content production (78.1% of marketers), audience segmentation (42.7%), data analytics (38.5%), and personalization (34.4%).
This shift is transforming CMS and DXPs into more dynamic, intelligent, and adaptive systems.
Reaching Different Touchpoints
Hellier: Of course, this answer has to involve AI! Our focus is on enabling business groups to move quickly and deliver the information experiences that customers, partners, and employees most need.
Moving quickly leaves no room for error, and so AI is making it much easier and faster for functional teams to imagine a new experience, realize it in the DXP, and do it safely and using proven, approved delivery tools.
Imagine being able to go from Design to Experience in seconds, and to do it while leveraging the secure, tested, and proven connections necessary to safely and securely handle sensitive customer and business information. This is now a reality.
More Strategic Thinking
Cherif: Brand-aware, AI-enhanced intelligent DXP solutions allow marketers to work faster, smarter, and more strategically across the marketing lifecycle. By integrating agentic workflows, copilots, and agents in one orchestration layer, marketers can provide an elevated digital experience across channels.
Brand-aware AI is a critical tool for DXP solutions. The brand must remain a unifying thread across everything that marketers do, so activities must align with brand identity, guidelines, and values while adhering to security protocols to remain effective.
Exchanges Taking Place Via Audio Rather Than Visual Platforms
MacAuley: Across DXP solutions, we are seeing a switch from exchanges taking place via audio rather than visual platforms. Going forward, rather than typing messages to AI platforms on our devices, more people will communicate with their devices using audio, speaking to tools like agentic AI to deliver instructions.
From a user experience perspective, this will effectively switch the role of technology to be more like a personal assistant to take on tasks and carry them out.
AI Agents for Experimentation
Corey: Agentic AI is a game changer. Optimizely’s Opal is a good example of this in action. Opal introduces agentic AI that’s built specifically for marketers. Not just to automate tasks but to actually do the work in smart, creative ways.
Opal uses specialized AI agents trained on things like content, experimentation, and campaign data to handle everyday tasks like analyzing web pages, generating content, or pulling performance reports.
It’s designed to work the way marketers do, with a new, intuitive interface, persistent chat across the whole platform, and flexible workflows that can string multiple actions together.
Real-Time Data Activation
Egan: One of the most transformative capabilities we’ve introduced at Contentstack is real-time data activation, supercharged by our recent acquisition of Lytics. As organizations move away from monolithic DXPs toward composable architectures, activating data at the moment it’s captured is no longer a luxury; it’s a necessity.
With Lytics’ powerful customer data platform technology now integrated into our Composable DXP, we enable enterprises to unify behavioral, transactional, and contextual data and immediately turn it into personalized experiences across every digital touchpoint. This is real-time intelligence embedded directly into the content layer, allowing marketers to trigger content changes and customer journeys in milliseconds.
This capability turns data from something you analyse later into something you act on now. It transforms personalization from reactive to predictive. And most importantly, it closes the loop between insight and execution, giving brands the agility and intelligence to deliver truly dynamic digital experiences.
The Future of the DXP Market
Real-Time Data-Driven Experiences
Gong: At Contentful, we believe the future of the DXP market lies in real-time, data-driven personalized experiences powered by Generative AI. As content creation scales, data becomes the engine that fuels everything from audience segmentation to AI decision-making and dynamic content optimization.
Soon, teams will be able to deliver experiences that continuously learn and adapt based on live audience signals and performance insights. Next generation DXPs won’t just manage content, they’ll intelligently orchestrate it, ensuring every visitor sees the most relevant, high-impact experience in real time.
Hyper-Personalization
Faatz: It is an exciting time to be part of the DXP space, particularly if you thrive in an environment of change and experimentation. The DXP market will continue to evolve in the face of AI.
As the technology brings new innovations, I believe we will realize the promise of hyper-personalization. We will see precise targeting and higher engagement. I believe AI will change the face of the digital experience, allowing the end-user to tailor it to their needs and wants.
In some cases, AI will become the UI, and this will have a profound impact on the way end-users engage with the digital experience.
The DXP itself will become more malleable and scalable as the end-user’s behavior changes. This may mean that the DXP delivers content and experiences in different ways, including through AI Agents.
Broad View of Information Management
Hellier: Is DXP a platform, a set of applications, or highly composable experiences for both customers and the employees who help ensure customers are successful?
The future will be fast-moving, innovative, and highly agile. Organizations will need to do more with less and meet a wide set of customer expectations. Organizations will need to set a strong vision on how they will differentiate in the experience economy and adapt like crazy.
We’ve just begun AI and data innovation. The future winners will have a broader view of Information Management and look beyond marketing-led, customer acquisition-centric experiences.
It needs to be the full journey, especially post-purchase, where loyalty, growth, and profitability thrive. These critical experiences, such as onboarding, self-service, and interactive customer communications, to name a few, will be powered by well-integrated, composable DXP platforms. The name of the game is being open.
Agentic AI… Again!
Cherif: The future of the DXP market relies on a balance between human control and AI. With automation breakthroughs ongoing, success hinges on two aspects: the correct adoption of AI for a company’s needs and the correct combination of human input and automation.
As brands scale personalized experiences, AI will play a growing role in content creation, optimization, and decision-making. However, expert contextual guidance will remain critical for teaching AI systems how to be effective.
Agentic experiences will change the way marketers operate and the end customer experience. The evolution is clear, for example, at Microsoft Build, Open Agentic Web was announced, an internet where agents make decisions and perform tasks on behalf of users.
Alignment of AI with Traditional Infrastructure
MacAuley: The future of the DXP market will undoubtedly be focused on ensuring that sites and services are prepared for the adoption of agentic AI and the presentation layer of communications shifting from visual to audio.
These technological shifts will undoubtedly change user experiences on platforms, but must be backed up by robust interfaces to prevent early adoption issues.
Optimization of Data
Corey: The DXP market is maturing. We no longer need to convince marketers and CX professionals that personalization, real-time data, or omnichannel experiences matter – they already know. The future is now all about optimization.
With budgets tightening, teams stretched, and customer expectations climbing, marketers and CX professionals need to do more with less. DXPs must rise to that challenge, not just unlocking great experiences, but continuously optimizing them and improving on what came before.
AI will be absolutely essential to this future.
Composable API-First Platforms
Egan: The DXP market is at a crossroads, and many legacy vendors are struggling to keep up. Monolithic platforms are outdated, too rigid, too slow, and too expensive to meet today’s fast-paced digital demands.
The industry’s obsession with “all-in-one” suites is holding brands back from true innovation. The future belongs to composable, adaptive, API-first platforms that give businesses real freedom and control.
In my view, the market will consolidate around cloud-native solutions that prioritize real-time data activation and intelligent orchestration. Brands that fail to embrace this shift will lose ground to more nimble competitors. It’s time to challenge the status quo and rethink how digital experiences are built and delivered, before it’s too late.
Miss out on our previous CX Today roundtable? Check it out here: Contact Center Automation: Trends, Tricks, and Tools.
