Opticon London 2026

Every brand at Opticon London 2026 was asking some version of the same question. Not whether AI will change digital experience, but how fast, and what's worth investing in first. 

MSQ DX was there in force, including several of our Optimizely Most Valuable People (OMVPs). Here's what each of them took away, and where they'd push back. 

Every skyline starts underground. 

Lorna Foott, Director of Partnerships 

One image from Alex Atzberger's keynote has lingered: a city drawn in Optimizely's bold, illustrative style, with deep infrastructure running beneath its streets. Above ground is the live experience, the creativity and standout brands want as a moat. Below it is the deep, less glamorous work: the structured content, governance and guardrails that let the skyline stand. 

That matches what we see with our own clients. The ones who started early are further ahead today. More importantly, they've built ground the next wave of capability can stand on. The deeper the foundations, the higher you can build. 

Two products worth watching. 

Andy Blyth, Technical Architect 

Two Optimizely products stood out. Both aim to make marketing teams faster and more relevant. 

Virtual Teammates bring AI specialists into your marketing team, from Content Marketer and SEO and AI Search Analyst to CRO Manager and Chief of Staff. Each knows your brand, joins meetings and works around the clock. What I like most is the memory. Each teammate builds shared context over time, so results improve the more you work with it. Give each one an onboarding period, as you would any new starter. 

Dynamic Experiences builds a web experience for each visitor in real time, reading campaign, referral, device and location signals from the first visit. Marketers keep control of the source content and guardrails. Carrying campaign intent onto the site makes paid traffic work harder. My suggestion: cache cold-start experiences by UTM tag, so first visits from paid campaigns load faster. 

AI is the future. Or is it? 

Tom Robinson, Technical Analyst 

Optimizely spoke a lot about how AI is changing marketing. But plenty of speakers pushed back against the agents, arguing that humanity in marketing matters more than ever. I have to agree. When everything seems to be generated or 'enhanced' by AI, the only way to stand out is to be unique and human. 

The keynote framed the modern stack around three experiences: marketer, customer and agent. Agent experience is the new one. It covers how agents interact with your site, from clearly digestible content to new standards like WebMCP that signpost a page's key actions. 

My takeaway: don't over-optimise for agents at the expense of customers. Humans aren't going anywhere. 

The era of big bets. 

John Prior, Principal Consultant 

We're entering an era of big bets, for platforms like Optimizely and for every brand and marketer. Alex Atzberger challenged the idea of AI as a cost-cutting engine: "You don't grow by reducing headcount." Anthony Ben Sadoun argued you can't iterate your way to reinvention, or judge tomorrow's experience by today's engagement patterns. It's the Jevons paradox by way of the Red Queen's Race: everyone running faster to stay still. 

I don't think it's quite that simple. Growth over cost reduction won't fit every sector or department. And conversations on the floor showed that for many brands, the speed of potential change is inhibiting actual change. The incentive is to wait and see. Of course, waiting is also a big bet: that you can catch competitors already moving faster, and win back customers who've already moved on. 

AI will reshape two areas. Creation (our skills, roles, pipelines and platforms) is within our control, and the case for investment gets clearer by the day. Delivery (experiences, relationships, products and reputation) is shaped by customers, competitors and regulators. Getting creation right now at least gets you to the starting blocks. 

Last year, Optimizely showed us its own bets. This year it showed results, and where it thinks we should place ours. By next Opticon, I suspect the talk will turn to where customers are placing theirs. And then the real race will begin. 

What we're taking back to our builds. 

Graham Carr, Technical Architect 

Beyond the headline launches, here's what matters most for the Optimizely builds we deliver: 

• Governance is built in. Virtual Teammates have their own Opti ID, scoped permissions, human review points and audit trails. Exactly what enterprise clients will ask about first. 

• Costs are being tackled. Model routing and purpose-built models are a smart answer to spiralling token costs. 

• Context is king. Clean, well-structured, governed content is the foundation for every one of these AI features, which makes good content architecture more valuable than ever. 

• Agents are now an audience. AI agents are a primary audience for our websites, and making sites agent-ready needs to be on every 2027 roadmap. 

Five views. One conclusion. 

The capability is here. The impact depends on what sits underneath it. 

Foundations, governance, skills and well-structured content decide whether any of these launches deliver. The brands getting the most from them are measuring impact from the start, so they can see what's working, prove its value and know where to invest next. And while agents are now an audience worth designing for, they're not the only one. The best results will come from building for both, without losing sight of the humans on the other side of the screen. 

Ready to make an impact of your own? 

We're MSQ DX, the digital impact company. As an Optimizely Strategic Global Partner, Platinum Solution Partner and an Opal (now, Mark) Specialised Solution and Onboarding Partner, we're already on the front foot with Optimizely's agentic platform, delivering award-winning agentic workflows for clients like Corinthia Hotels. 

If Tuesday's announcements got you thinking, whether that's Virtual Teammates, agentic workflows or anything else from the day, we'd love to talk it through.