Reflections from Advertising Week 2026
Advertising Week 2026 was as jampacked as ever this year, and there was no shortage of insightful speakers and engaging sessions (and reusable green water bottles).
As expected, AI was once again a major theme. But what stood out wasn't necessarily how much more technology allows us to do. Instead, it was how much more intentional we need to be about what we're doing in the first place. Across creative, targeting, measurement, and media planning, there was a common thread: for the brands and agencies that will have the most success with AI, more isn't always better—but putting people at the center of planning, campaigns, and performance continues to be the most important ingredient for success.
1. WHEN IT COMES TO CREATIVE, QUALITY > QUANTITY
- The goal should be more creative learnings rather than more output. There is a growing tendency towards AI-driven creative production at scale, but that can lead to overwhelming consumers with a high volume of content that isn't actually that different. AI is obviously a huge time-saver for creative production and, while generating more creative variations can help combat fatigue and teach what resonates, the key distinction is whether we're producing more of the same or testing distinctly different ideas.
- Several sessions touched on this theme directly. One explored the idea that messaging should be developed around three purchase beliefs: whether the consumer cares about the problem, believes the product can solve it, and identifies with the brand. Another discussion further reinforced creative's importance, citing NCS research that attributed 49% of advertising-driven incremental sales lift to creative across the CPG campaigns studied.
- Looking ahead: Instead of testing five different versions of the same ad, test different consumer motivations, evidence, identities, and purchase barriers. Brands should focus on creative learning agendas rather than creative volume targets. Scaling creative thoughtfully is different from increasing content output. AI can help scale production, but strong consumer insights need to determine what gets produced.
2. WHEN IT COMES TO TARGETING, RELEVANCE > PRECISION
- It’s not just who you’re reaching, but also the context in which you’re reaching them. For years, integrated media planning has focused on identifying more precise audiences through demographics, interests, and behaviors. But as platforms like Meta, Google, and TikTok lean more heavily into AI-driven targeting, advertisers need to provide broader audience signals and guidelines, allowing algorithms to identify consumers most likely to respond. At the same time, understanding the environments, moments, and mindsets in which those consumers encounter advertising is becoming just as important.
- The ElevenLabs session discussed how algorithms now take on more of the traditional audience targeting process, making creative itself a more influential signal in determining who sees an ad. Meanwhile, ‘Beyond the Stream’ explored how AI enables contextual analysis of streaming content at a far more granular level than traditional genre or program targeting. The panel shared a case study where positive news placements outperformed general and negative news in the same campaign. While that doesn't mean the same result will hold universally, it demonstrates why context is worth testing. During ‘Brands in Apps’, panelists similarly challenged the idea that gaming and mobile app inventory should be evaluated solely through clicks, emphasizing the role of consumer attention, placement quality, and the overall ad experience.
- Sports sessions further touched on this idea. Wayfair and Paramount’s ‘Home is Where the Game Is’ NFL campaign was built on the insight that almost all NFL fans will never attend a game in person, so Wayfair set out to “own the living room” where fans watch. Paramount noted that fans “aren't just consuming the NFL; they're consuming other things,” which is why the campaign extends into NBA games and Paramount+ entertainment. In ‘More Than the Game’, YouTube TV described partnering with Bill Simmons and The Ringer on a recurring “Chief Multiview Officer” segment for NFL Sunday Ticket, which performed better than a standard ad break. As YouTube TV’s Wes Harris put it, “We want to add value, not a logo.”
- Looking ahead: As platforms take on more of the audience identification process, the role of media planners is shifting. Rather than relying solely on narrowly defined audiences, we need to provide the right creative, signals, and strategic direction to help platforms find relevant consumers. At the same time, contextual alignment, attention quality, and consumer mindset should factor into how we plan, test, and optimize campaigns. Not all impressions are necessarily created equal, and reaching the right person doesn't guarantee we're reaching them in the right environment. The goal isn't just to be more precise with targeting, and knowing exactly who we're reaching isn't enough if we ignore the environment in which we're reaching them.
3. WHEN IT COMES TO PATH TO PURCHASE, CONSUMER > PLATFORM
- The path to purchase is less linear now, and campaign strategies need to shift to follow consumers rather than channels/platforms. Consumers discover products, research options, seek recommendations, and make purchases across a growing number of touchpoints. We can’t always assume that the platform introducing consumers to a product will be the platform receiving conversion credit.
- ‘Content to Cart: The New Era of Social Commerce at Ulta Beauty’ in particular touched on this theme. The session explored how inspiration, product discovery, creator recommendations, and purchasing are increasingly intertwined. Ulta discussed meeting consumers where they already spend time, including places like TikTok Shop. Pinterest’s Kristin Patterson added another perspective: people don't always arrive knowing precisely what they want to buy. Sometimes they're exploring possibilities and developing preferences. Meanwhile, ‘AI Performance Anxiety’ raised the prospect that AI-generated search answers could reduce traditional click opportunities, further changing how consumers discover and evaluate brands.
- Coca-Cola’s Josh Gurley took this a step further with AI shopping agents: “We were everywhere, and now, suddenly, we only have one place.” When an agent shops for a consumer, it may surface only one or two options. Agents rely on structured product data (price, stock, specs, attributes), so a missing detail, such as a gluten-free tag, can lead the agent to leave the product out of its recommendation entirely. DoorDash added that consumers increasingly describe occasions (“dinner for eight with dietary restrictions”) rather than specific products, and InMobi noted only 36% of online stores currently accept an agent-led purchase. A separate panel on advertising inside AI chatbots, following ChatGPT’s sponsored ad launch, noted that measurement is still immature. As Optimum’s CMO Jinx Joglekar put it, “We don't know how to measure… incrementality, but… we know the eyeballs are there.”
- As AI-powered search reshapes how consumers discover and evaluate products, brands need to rethink visibility and relevance throughout the purchase journey. With AI-generated recommendations drawing on third-party sources, including reviews, independent content and consumer conversations, building credibility beyond brand-owned channels is more important. This makes a strong case for a more always-on UGC strategy, particularly through smaller, niche creators who can authentically reach different audiences and communities. Rather than relying on one-off influencer campaigns, we recommend brands build a consistent presence across the places that consumers turn to for recommendations and validation. For brands with limited creative resources, there's an added benefit: a steady pipeline of UGC can also fuel paid media, giving teams more content to test, refresh, and optimize as creative fatigues. Beyond providing a steady source of paid social creative, UGC can play a much broader role in how brands build relevance, reach new audiences, and stay visible as AI continues to reshape discovery.
- Looking ahead: When working through campaign planning, ask yourself, “are we investing enough in the media responsible for creating demand, or disproportionately allocating budget to channels that capture demand once it's already formed?” As social platforms, creator content, product feeds, and AI-assisted discovery all influence purchasing decisions, we all need to think more holistically about where brands show up and how those investments work together. And as more platforms play a role in discovery without necessarily receiving conversion credit, it becomes even more important to reconsider how we measure their contributions.
4. WHEN IT COMES TO MEASUREMENT, STRATEGY > SPEED
- With more data available than ever, we need to differentiate between what's easy to measure versus what's meaningful to a client’s business. At times, there can be a tendency to optimize toward metrics simply because they're readily available. This becomes even more important as AI takes on a greater role in campaign optimization. An agent will optimize around the KPIs we establish, so choosing the right one matters more than ever.
- In ‘Show Me the Outcomes’, ABCS Insights and Verve explored an important distinction between the KPIs we use to optimize campaigns and the business outcomes we use to validate their effectiveness. In one retail campaign, add-to-cart activity significantly exceeded expectations, suggesting the campaign was generating purchase intent. However, rather than relying on that metric alone, the team used independent measurement to validate household sales lift. The ‘Building the Decision Engine for Agentic Marketing’ session reinforced the importance of looking beyond platform attribution and incorporating incrementality testing and MMM to better understand media’s true contribution. A key theme across these discussions was that lower-funnel results aren't inherently more valuable just because they materialize faster or are easier to attribute. Upper-funnel tactics can create demand that takes longer to translate into measurable purchases, and not every metric that indicates progress is necessarily proof of success.
- Looking ahead: The question isn't whether every channel can drive conversions, it's whether we're measuring each channel/tactic against the contribution it was designed to make. Campaign success should be based on the role media is intended to play, not solely on the metrics that platforms make it easiest to report out on. There’s also a bigger opportunity to connect shorter-term signals to longer-term value, and to be mindful of when those signals should influence investment priorities. The goal shouldn't be to hold every tactic to the same KPI, but to understand how each contributes to the broader strategy.
5. AND WHEN IT COMES TO LEVERAGING AI, JUDGMENT > OBSERVATION
- Naturally, a major focus during Advertising Week was agentic AI and automation. However, the most interesting discussions weren't necessarily about what technology could do, but focused on what we should delegate vs. what we should not. As AI automates execution, the value of human judgment becomes even more important.
- The ‘Beyond the Buy’ panel identified opportunities to automate tasks such as trafficking, billing, and data consolidation so that teams can spend more time developing strategy, interpreting results, and compiling insights. ‘The Human Edge in an Agentic World’ conversation offered a particularly useful distinction between observations and insights: AI can accelerate the process of finding patterns, but deciding what those patterns mean for a particular brand requires business context and judgment. The panel also raised the distinction between low-judgment tasks suitable for automation and high-judgment decisions that need human accountability.
- Looking ahead: As AI takes on more of the executional work, there’s a huge opportunity for agencies to spend less time gathering information and more time applying it strategically. Tasks like pulling reports, analyzing data, and identifying trends can become automated, freeing teams to focus on higher-value work. AI can surface patterns, connect data points, and recommend next steps, but understanding what those findings mean for a client's business, determining which opportunities are worth pursuing, and making informed strategic decisions require human judgment.
Look back at the five comparisons above and a pattern emerges. AI makes quantity, precision, platform reach, speed, and observation abundant. Quality, relevance, an understanding of the consumer, strategy, and judgment still depend on people. And once something becomes abundant for everyone, it stops being an advantage. When every brand can generate a hundred ad variations and every platform runs similar algorithms, the edge moves to the inputs: the consumer insight behind the creative, the context around the placement, the KPI we hand the agent.
AI will optimize toward whatever we point it at, faster and with less hesitation than any team. That makes setting the direction the most valuable work that we do. The agencies that win won't be the ones with the most tools, but the ones asking the best questions before, during, and after the tools start running.
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