Gen AI licensing, server-side tracking & more: The AI and tech trends shaping 2026

So, which AI stories snuck under the radar last year, with reverberations to be felt in the coming months? What other tech trends can still punch through the dominance of AI stories to shift the world in 2026? Let’s ask the industry’s top minds.

Kevin Drew Davis, executive creative director, Cramer-Krasselt: “Not enough people are talking about the inverted nature of AI. Most technology is created to solve a specific problem, then becomes more specialized as it scales. Generative AI is the opposite. No one asked for it, and it wasn’t built to solve one clear problem, yet it’s here, placing the burden on everyday people to figure out how to use it and why. Because most people are already competent at their jobs, they tend to project their weaknesses onto it: if you can’t write, you think AI can make you a writer; if you can’t design, you think it can make you a designer. We may already be seeing the bubble begin to deflate (with Microsoft scaling back its Copilot goals, scrutiny on AI stock inflation, and the number of users in some cases actually declining) as people realize AI can’t turn them into something they’re not.”

Paul Greenwood, global head of research & insight, We Are Social: “Perhaps this is more of an unknown rather than a lack of attention: in 2025, OpenAI opened the door to licensed IP and brand participation. We’re seeing the early signs of participatory brand presence in generative video. This isn’t branded content or paid media. It’s brands seeding the raw materials of culture – characters, mascots, worlds – and letting audiences remix them at scale. The Disney/OpenAI partnership is the clearest signal yet: brands embedding themselves inside the generation layer, not interrupting feeds downstream. Fans don’t just watch; they co-create. Earned media becomes synthetic, infinite, and emotionally owned by the audience. What’s under-discussed is the implication: this rewires the funnel. Reach gives way to cultural circulation. Creative shifts from asset production to IP stewardship. Measurement moves from impressions to participation density. Brands stop posting into culture and start powering it. That’s a structural change and it’s arriving faster than most marketers realize.”

Ian Lewis, head of data and analytics, Launch: “In 2025, server-side tracking has somehow continued to go under the radar. Given that Warc predicts the use of ‘brutal’ ad blockers will hit over a billion next year and will continue to grow, this needs to change. The impact of server-side tracking on results is consistent, and that’s before you add in the transformative impact it can have on strategy. Without it, you’re essentially missing out on data, often to the tune of more than 10% of overall sessions. And we all know that good strategy is born out of good data. In 2026, server-side tracking must be given the attention it deserves and be treated as the vital component of accurate measurement, rather than a nice-to-have.”

Heidi Waldusky, vice-president, brand marketing, Quad: “The biggest under-covered story of 2025 was that we can’t decide if consumers are lazy or limitless. We’re selling AI to consumers as a conduit to personal expansion. You can learn anything, create anything, heck, AI will help you be your best self! At the same time, we’re telling brands that people will hand over their shopping (and virtually everything else) to AI agents because the efficiency will be too hard to resist. So, which is it? Are we unlocking human potential or relieving humans of having to think? Both can’t be true. Either people want to engage more deeply with the world, or they’re happy to automate their preferences away. It feels like we’re building customer experiences based on fundamentally opposing beliefs about human nature. My hunch? The truth is messier. People want help with tedious decisions and depth with meaningful ones.”

Rob Chedid, partner, Lippincott: “For marketers who’ve spent the past few years prudently preparing for a cookie-less future – meeting with analytics and web teams to understand the impact to funnel measurement, exploring alternative targeting and tracking options with media agencies and solution providers and reading the steady stream of frantic headlines about the cookie’s impending demise – I would’ve expected Google’s 2025 reversal of their third-party cookie policy, after years of kicking the implementation can down the road, to be met with uproar and outrage instead a collective industry shrug. We also heard little from the innovative new platforms and technologies that sprang up to meet the moment. Based on the media coverage of the topic, it seems AI has overshadowed everything and that we’ve decided to live in perpetual cookie purgatory, with little visibility into what comes next except constantly having to decide to accept or reject cookies.”

Mike Caguin, chief creative officer, Betty: “We’ve all obsessed over what AI can do, and agencies have rushed to create new job titles in response. What I haven’t heard, though, is people talking about the thing that will actually determine whether AI becomes a sustainable creative advantage: our ability to incorporate it into repeatable, scalable workflows. Generative AI is powerful, but it’s inconsistent by nature. The real advantage isn’t just hiring ‘prompt engineers’ or experimenting with new tools. It’s building processes that make outputs reliable, reproducible and scalable. That’s the conversation our industry should be having a lot more loudly. Not on the novelty of AI, but about the operational rigor that will make it a dependable part of the creative stack.”

Jen Passaniti, head of production, Highdive: “We’ve heard more than enough about AI this year, but one of the most under-discussed aspects of it this year is why AI-powered work either breaks through – or breaks trust. The difference isn’t the tech. It’s the creative standards behind it. Campaigns that resonated treated AI as infrastructure, not the idea itself, and held the output to the same bar as any top-tier production. Those who struggled often optimized for novelty or speed and asked audiences to accept ‘good-for-AI’ instead of genuinely good work. We haven’t given enough attention to how quickly audiences sense that gap, responding to taste, intention and execution – and pushing back when those are missing. The quiet shift this year is AI going from spectacle to disciplined creative tool, shaped by experienced creatives and brand controls. That’s where momentum is actually building, even if it’s happening without much noise.”

Adrienn Major, founder, Pod LDN: “We talk a lot about the advent of AI, but something that’s not always talked about is how much marketing content is already being generated with AI. Always-on marketing means brands need more content than ever before. According to the IAB, more than half of marketers already use generative AI for creative content and audience targeting. So, why are some in our industry still refusing to grasp this new reality? The other trend that has gone somewhat under the radar is scalable workflows and the use of freelance rosters by brands and agencies. While this is driven by the economic situation, the benefits of this way of working aren’t always brought into the discussion.”

Mike Hayward, chief creative officer, Copacino: “Tech leaders have lost their luster. With Sam’s AI promises and threats, yet another failed Meta product launch (let’s be real, those glasses are for creepy dudes) and Elon becoming the butt of several jokes, the voices of tech don’t have the cultural cache they did even just a few years ago. So while still using the tools of tech, we’re no longer letting their agendas drive our work. We’re getting back to using our own talent, judgment and taste.”

Pat Dunneback, group brand director, Battery: “While attention stays on AI generative content, the under-covered story is AI marketing operations. The bigger shift behind the scenes is AI’s impact on strategy, research, media planning, project management and performance. This has compressed timelines, blurred traditional roles, and changed what ‘expertise’ looks like. The brands and agencies pulling ahead aren’t chasing shiny tools; they’re redesigning how decisions and work actually happen.”

Andrew Vucko, founder, Vucko: “Spotify Wrapped: It might seem crazy to suggest this phenomenon as the big story that didn’t get enough attention. Once again, it excited millions across the globe. Its success is deeply supported by its motion system and that’s what rarely gets recognized. It’s a system that unifies motion across cross-functional teams, delivering a cohesive worldwide experience that spans product and marketing. As culture and technology move ever-quicker, deliverables are becoming increasingly unwieldy. Historically, static visual guidelines help with this, providing cohesion across teams and markets. But marketers aren’t affording motion systems the same attention. Motion output needs to flex and deliver for multiple functions, but without a more strategic approach, teams increasingly struggle to align. In 2026, let’s celebrate motion systems that help brands keep up with the pace of digital and also stay true to their identity on every frame.”

James Kirkham, founder, Iconic: “The most interesting story this year isn’t AI getting better, or even AI as a threat. It’s that most of the marketing industry is quietly relearning how to behave now that ‘scale’ doesn’t work the way it used to. Vanity metrics and fat reach numbers no longer cut it. A decade of relentless optimization pushed everything into sameness, and now we’re dealing with the consequences: nothing sticks. What’s emerging instead is a shift toward smaller, more intimate spaces where human judgment is back in the loop. Brands are investing in people who can sense and host, not just broadcast. Agencies will be valued less for volume and more for taste and restraint. Media plans will look more like cultural programming than pure buying. As a result, the best work isn’t louder or brash; it’s slower, more human, and actually felt rather than just seen. This hasn’t made headlines because it doesn’t suit platforms or press obsessed with peaks, but this is the year marketing quietly admitted attention is finite, trust is fragile and culture can’t just be scaled without getting deep into what it is, why it exists, and who it truly speaks to.”