14 marketers predict what’s next for streaming, measurement, AI and retail in 2026

2025 was a banner year for advertising. Federal judges ruled Google a monopoly in both search and ad tech, major acquisitions reshaped the industry, the Super Bowl streamed on a FAST platform for the first time ever and agentic AI set the market ablaze.

As we move on to 2026, here’s what leading marketers say will matter most across streaming, measurement, AI and retail media.

Streaming

“Fragmentation won’t disappear, but pressure from buyers will force progress. Expect more transparency from publishers, better metadata, and cleaner supply paths. The shift will resemble the evolution of display a decade ago: from opaque buying to accountable, verifiable inventory.”

– Dan Larkman, CEO, Keynes Digital

“The Great Consolidation Era Begins. 2026 will be the year streaming finally grows up — and consolidates. Fragmentation has hit a breaking point, and we’ll see the first wave of true ‘super-platforms’ emerge as top players collapse inward, merging technology, identity, and even inventory — to form the first true super-platforms that deliver cleaner reach and smarter ad experiences.”

- Katrina Stroh, VP, Media+

“The year ahead will finally bring down the last silos in video advertising. Advertisers will stop dividing budgets between linear, streaming, and digital and start focusing on audiences that move freely between them. Measurement will connect exposure, engagement, and outcomes across every screen, so marketers can plan and learn from one unified view. As data becomes easier to share in privacy-safe ways, the walls around walled gardens will start to fall.”

- Jenny Wall, CMO, VideoAmp

Measurement

“Closed-loop, AI-powered creative systems will become the new competitive moat. The old cycle of “brief → produce → launch → react” is too slow. Leading brands will operate in fast, regenerative loops where insights immediately feed new concepts. Creative will be refreshed continuously, made possible by AI-powered operating systems. This approach becomes difficult to copy and becomes a true competitive advantage.”

- Alice Woo, Chief Creative Officer, New Engen

“Marketers want answers in real time. The legacy models that depend on slow reporting or lagging attribution are quickly losing relevance. If 2025 was the year of scale and expansion, 2026 will be the year of refinement. The industry doesn’t need more channels or more data. It needs better ones - faster, cleaner, and more accountable.”

- Ben Kartzman, President and COO, Attain

The open internet hits a reset in 2026. While antitrust pressure forces platforms to unbundle, marketers increasingly rebundle and integrate—bringing traditional and digital channels together with retail media, AI search, streaming, and creators into unified planning. The winners aren’t those with the most data, but those who can turn fragmented, walled-garden signals into confident, incremental growth

- Kris Tait, Chief Business Officer, Croud

Moving forward, identity graphs will expand to include both human-operated and AI-operated devices, giving marketers a clearer way to understand how campaigns aimed at people influence the choices their agents make. The brands that lean into this adaptable view of identity will gain the clearest view of outcomes and value.”

- Mathieu Roche, Co-founder and CEO, ID5

“Publishers face fundamental shifts in how audiences discover content in 2026, and the ones who thrive will have robust contextual intelligence. As platforms like OpenAI explore partnerships with publishers, quality signals that truly understand what content is about are becoming essential, not just for editorial but for commerce opportunities like retail media.

- Fiona Salmon, Managing Director, Mantis

AI

“In 2026, brands will demand evidence, not assertions. As AI and data tools flood the market, credibility will come from external verification, audits, accreditations, patents, and peer-reviewed research, rather than self-reported innovation. The companies that say “don’t trust me, trust the proof” will win. And should the AI bubble burst, this shift will become even more critical, separating those built on real results from those built on hype. Don’t be left holding the bag.”

- Jon Morra, Chief AI Officer, Zefr

“Synthetic data will be one of the sneakiest growth areas in 2026 and also one of the riskiest. The industry will need to pressure-test where synthetic insights come from and make sure real, high-quality data is the foundation.” 

- Jessica Saunders, VP of Global Partner Success & Operations, Eyeota

Retail media

The B2B market, hampered by lengthy processes and reliance on outdated tracking, is now ripe for disruption by applying the closed-loop logic of Retail Media Networks. The solution is the inevitable rise of Business Media Networks (BMNs), which will package first-party "work identity" data, enabling marketers to finally achieve the holy grail of measuring awareness-to-profit within a single system where the fight for context—not scale—will determine the winner.

- Elizabeth Marsten, Vice President, Commerce Media, Tinuiti

“Retail media networks will keep growing, but the conversation will shift from ‘look at our first-party data’ to ‘here’s what we don’t know.’ The networks that win in 2026 will be the ones that can fill those blind spots through smart partnerships and interoperable data.”

- Georgina Bankier, Vice President, Global Commercial & Platform Partnerships, D&B

“Retail media is moving from performance marketing to proof‑driven marketing. Advertisers will demand validated incrementality with credible, experiment‑based testing that isolates true sales impact. AI will move beyond the back‑end to become the engine of the storefront, curating layouts, personalizing offers, and connecting in‑store signals to digital buying in privacy‑preserving ways. As streaming and retail converge, shoppable video powered by retailer data will pull CTV into the commerce funnel. Agencies will organize around commerce outcomes, not channels.”

- Pat Copeland, General Manager, Moloco Commerce Media

“As consumer discovery begins to migrate into LLMs and retailer site traffic inevitably softens, media budgets will start looking for a new home. The retailers that win will be the ones that already treated Retail Media as more than an ad product: those who built scaled, systemized offsite and in-store networks that make shopping better, not noisier. Growth will come from breaking down internal silos, aligning merchant, marketing, and media teams around total business performance, and letting AI and automated workflows quietly handle the orchestration. Retail Media isn't an experiment anymore, it's an operating model for modern retail.”

- Drew Cashmore, Chief Strategy Officer, Vantage