Possible 2026: What advertising leaders said about AI, commerce media and the event itself

This year’s Possible is in the books. Over 7,000 attendees flocked to sunny Miami for what founder Christian Muche hopes could be marketing’s own Davos.

The first event in 2023 drew 2,400 attendees, so maybe he’s on to something.

In Miami, The Current spoke with and heard from leaders from The Coca-Cola Company, The Weather Company and more for their perspective on AI, commerce, women’s sports and everything in between. Here’s some of the standout takes:

Manuel “Manolo” Arroyo, Chief Marketing Officer, The Coca-Cola Company: I am fascinated by the tension between the need to achieve global scale with the need to be hyper-relevant at a “micro-level” and move at the speed of culture. This is only possible with the application of enabling technology like AI with levels of customization that were unthinkable just a few years ago, with adaptive creative unleashed on the fly.

Andrea Brimmer, Chief Marketing and PR Officer, Ally Financial: (On Ally Financial’s pledge to invest equally in women’s and men’s sports) We wanted to do something substantive that would actually be meaningful in the women’s sports ecosystem. It seems counterintuitive now given how popular women’s sports are, but at the time they did not have the same ubiquity that they do today.

(On what the results have been like since making that pledge) We find that, for fans of women’s sports, their favorability towards Ally is 20 to 30 percentage points higher, depending on the sport, than general market.

Dani Feore, Vice President, Industry Sales, The Weather Company: I have not had a single conversation where the term AI has not come up. It’s about how to make everything that we do more efficient and accurate and precise, but there’s also concern about how AI starts to do some of our jobs. There have been a lot of conversations about companies that have lost employees due to the efficiencies and technology that AI brings. […] How quickly does that start to materialize in our industry? I think that’s a big concern that we’re seeing.

Molly Hjelm, Corporate Vice President, Head of Retail Media, Ace Hardware: As mature as commerce media seems today, the conversations that I’ve been having with marketers over the course of these couple days really indicates that there’s still opportunity for us to finesse and for us to continue to get better and solve even more nuanced challenges. I think that there can be a lot of echo chamber dialogue that goes on within commerce media. […] So to hear the scale of the challenges [other leaders are] solving for is really inspiring and refreshing.

Sam Lewis, Senior Vice President, Creative & Media, U.S., DEPT: (On how to audit agentic media buying) For us, we look at the data piece of it. How do you understand what data went into a decision. […] For us, it’s about understanding the inputs and outputs, but one of the next areas of investment is understanding how the LLM itself made a decision.

Tracy-Ann Lim, Global Chief Media Officer, JPMorgan Chase: AI can’t replace judgment and taste and critical thinking. If you delegate that, you’re going to be less valuable to others.

Lou Paskalis, Founder & CEO, AJL Advisory: Most of the conferences that marketers convene at were built for things other than what we do; marketing was a bolt-on. [… ]But [Possible] was built from the ground up for marketers by marketers.