Possible 2026: AI is marketing’s Stradivarius. But ‘the violin can’t play itself.’
At Possible 2026, AI was the hottest topic on Miami Beach, where more than 7,000 attendees gathered for the three-day festival. Now in its third year, the event has carved out a distinct spot on the marketing calendar — after CES but before Cannes Lions — as the go-to stateside venue for networking, listening and taking the pulse of the industry.
This year, the hype cycle around AI felt more subdued. In its place was a more measured, even philosophical, conversation about AI and its impact on trust. Call it a shift from hype to humanity.
“AI is the Stradivarius for marketing,” Lou Paskalis, founder and CEO of AJL Advisory, told The Current, likening AI to the finest violins ever made. “But here’s the thing: The violin can’t play itself. You need an impresario, someone who really knows how to play that instrument.”
That idea became a recurring refrain. During a fireside chat on Possible’s Innovation stage, Michael Kassan, CEO of 3C Ventures, recounted hearing a high-profile speech that he suspected was written by AI and posed a simple question: Should we care?
Kellyn Smith Kenny, chief marketing and growth officer at AT&T, didn’t hesitate: “I believe human excellence will be ever more revered,” she insisted.
Trust is a new ROI
Marketing leaders were equally focused on the risks of outsourcing judgment to machines.
“AI can’t replace judgment and taste and critical thinking,” said Tracy-Ann Lim, global chief media officer at JPMorgan Chase, speaking at The Trade Desk’s OpenHouse. “If you delegate that, you’re going to be less valuable to others.”
She warned of being “on the precipice of a sloppy ecosystem” flooded with low-quality, AI-generated output. “That won’t make you any more trustworthy or any more referential,” she said.
“Trust is the measure of doing this stuff correctly. In my view, trust is a new ROI,” she added.
Despite this caution, there was no avoiding the fact that AI — particularly its more autonomous, agentic forms for media buyers — is here to stay.
“AI is perhaps the greatest invention of our generation. It’s a game changer,” said Jeff Green in conversation with Axios media correspondent Sara Fischer at OpenHouse.
Green compared the moment to both the dot-com boom and the industrial revolution. But struck an optimistic note for digital advertising.
“Agentic AI is better suited for programmatic advertising than really any other field,” he said, in part because of the sheer complexity and variability of media decisions, where no two impressions are exactly alike.
At its core, he added, the technology functions as “a productivity tool — an API that can reason,” helping marketers navigate the “millions of dials” in modern media buying and determine which ones actually matter.
Talent in the loop
On the creative side, AI is already unlocking new possibilities for global brands.
“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,” said Manuel “Manolo” Arroyo, CMO of The Coca-Cola Company. “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.”
But even here, the conversation circled back to the importance of human oversight. “AI tech is only as good as the data feeding it,” Smith Kenny said.
“Bad assumptions get industrialized,” added Ben Skinazi, chief commercial officer and CMO of Equativ. “The marketers pulling ahead are not the fastest to automate. They are the ones who understand that human judgment and creative rigor are what close the trust gap and make AI a genuine advantage.”
If Possible confirmed anything, it’s that marketers aren’t ready to hand over the creative reins. After the exuberance of 2025, the industry is taking a clearer-eyed view of both the challenges and virtues of this technology.
“The next great marketing campaign isn’t going to be a derivation of the last,” Paskalis said. “Innovation requires people to think differently. And AI doesn’t do that without a human in the loop.”
Still, there’s an unresolved tension beneath the consensus. If AI takes over the foundational, entry-level work that once trained marketers, where does the next generation of “impresarios” come from?
“Where I worry is the pipeline of talent,” Paskalis said. “Young people — the ones who start out doing the research, the old mail room analogy — those jobs may not exist anymore.”
The industry may believe in “talent in the loop.” The harder question is whether it’s still building that talent in the first place. The conversation will no doubt continue on the Croisette during Cannes Lions.
The Current is owned and operated by The Trade Desk, Inc.