Alison Levin takes the wheel at IAB as advertising enters its AI supercycle

The handover arrives at a moment when advertising is being reshaped not just by platform shifts or new formats, but by artificial intelligence itself.

And Levin’s message was clear: the industry needs to move faster on building common infrastructure, not just individual innovation.

A chair shaped by change

Levin, now president of advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, arrived in that role via Roku, where she helped pioneer connected TV advertising. Reflecting on the industry’s rapid evolution, she reminded the room just how recently the internet itself still needed explaining.

“Think about that insane pace of change,” she said, referencing early television segments explaining what the internet was and later tutorials teaching viewers how to send text messages. “From ‘what is the internet’ to putting the entire internet in our pockets in just 30 years.”

But she argues that the next shift will dwarf even those.

“2026 marks the start of the largest supercycle of all,” Levin told attendees. “This AI supercycle touches everything – creative, media buying, measurement, activation. This is not a single department shift. It’s an industry-wide reinvention.”

Her concern is not innovation itself, but fragmentation.

“We are all building faster cars for a track that doesn’t exist yet,” she warned. “Our cars are nothing if we don’t have a steady, well-built track to race them on.”

That track, she argues, must be built collectively through shared standards, talent development and industry-wide collaboration – work she sees the IAB as uniquely positioned to lead.

Reed: ‘Marketers must stay in the driver’s seat’

Outgoing chair Reed leaves the role after a year focused on ensuring marketers had a stronger voice in shaping industry standards and infrastructure.

“This milestone isn’t just personal,” Reed said of becoming the first brand marketer to serve as chair. “It signals that marketers are not just customers of this industry – we’re helping to lead it.”

Her central message is that brands can no longer sit on the sidelines while technical and policy decisions are made.

“For far too long, many brands have treated the IAB as something happening around them,” she said. “If we want an ecosystem that truly reflects marketer priorities, marketers have to be in the pits, not in the grandstands.”

Reed described an industry grappling with the emergence of what she called a split between the “human web and an agentic web,” with automated agents increasingly interacting with content, commerce and advertising.

“This isn’t a storm we can wait out,” she said. “We have to learn how to race in the rain.”

She also pointed to how deeper marketer involvement in infrastructure and standards can produce tangible business results, citing GM’s internal media transformation.

“When marketers get deeply involved in the plumbing – the standards, the data, the measurement – we can create real, sustainable business impact,” she said.

Though stepping down as chair, Reed remains deeply embedded in industry leadership, joining the ANA as vice-chair while continuing to serve on the IAB board.

“This is a continuum of leadership,” she said, “another way to keep driving alignment and progress across this ecosystem.”

Building the track

Levin now inherits that mandate, but with a sharper focus on preparing the industry for AI’s disruptive force.

Her priorities fall into three areas: shared standards, talent investment and creating safe environments for experimentation.

On standards, she pointed to the IAB Tech Lab’s agentic roadmap as critical infrastructure.

“If every publisher builds their own agent integration, every brand invents proprietary systems and every platform sets its own rules,” she warned, “we will not have an ecosystem. We’ll have chaos.”

She is equally concerned about talent. “Here’s the part we’re not talking enough about,” she said. “We’re automating away the entry point.”

Junior roles – once built on trafficking tags, building decks or pulling reports – are now tasks AI handles easily. Without deliberate intervention, Levin fears the industry risks producing professionals who can use AI tools but lack foundational understanding.

“The best AI strategy in the world won’t matter if we stop producing people who can actually lead this business forward,” she said.

Her final call is that industry leaders must share both successes and failures more openly. “Innovation accelerates when risk is shared,” she said, urging the IAB to foster off-the-record spaces for honest experimentation.

A turning point for advertising

IAB CEO David Cohen framed the leadership transition against a backdrop of unprecedented change. “As the digital industry embarks on another seismic shift driven by AI, our industry must rethink everything – media, measurement, commerce, creativity, workflow, privacy and consumer trust.”

But ultimately, Levin wants the moment to be remembered as one of collective ambition rather than fragmentation.

“30 years from now,” she told the room, “someone will stand on this stage and look back to 2026. They’ll either tell a story about an industry that built shared standards, invested in people and created infrastructure for decades of innovation – or they’ll tell a story about fragmentation and a missed opportunity.”

As incoming chair, she says her choice is already made. “I’m choosing optimism. I’m choosing collaboration. I’m choosing the hard work of building the track.”

And for an industry that thrives on change, the next lap is already underway.