As CES 2026 opened its doors, one industry tension was impossible to ignore. On one side: agencies consolidating at pace. Holding companies simplifying structures, trimming headcount, compressing margins and folding specialist teams together in the name of efficiency. On the other: media doing the exact opposite. More channels. More formats. More data. More platforms. More expectations – from clients, from consumers, and from the systems tasked with holding it all together.
The result is a growing strain inside modern advertising organizations: leaner teams being asked to run increasingly complex media environments, often with operating models that were never designed for this level of scale.
That tension of consolidation versus complexity framed a CES conversation with Heather Chevalley, vice-president of growth at Fluency, exploring what the shift reveals about how media is actually being run today, and what agencies will need to rethink if they want to scale sustainably into 2026 and beyond.
Consolidation, Chevalley argues, is not the problem in itself. In many ways, it’s inevitable. “Consolidation is about cost cutting. It’s about margin compression. And agencies need to do that to stay profitable,” she says. “But that is a competing priority – and really opposing forces – with media complexity.”
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Inside agencies, that contradiction often shows up in familiar ways: fewer people managing more channels, more tools, more data and more demands – relying on “heroics” to make it all work.
From a distance, it can look like progress. Up close, it often feels fragile. “What that ends up looking like is fewer people managing more channels, more complexity, more demands,” Chevalley explains.
According to Chevalley, the wave of consolidation is also an admission that the traditional agency structure no longer aligns with how media actually operates.
“The consolidation that we’re seeing is really the holding companies realizing that the traditional agency setup is no longer aligned with how media works today,” she says.
Media no longer behaves in neat silos – planning here, activation there, reporting somewhere else entirely. Yet many agency operating models still reflect that fragmented thinking, stitched together through manual processes and disconnected systems.
“Media is really being taped together and not thought about execution by design,” Chevalley notes. “It’s all manual effort.”
One of the clearest takeaways is that scale itself needs redefining. For decades, growth in agencies meant hiring: more people, more specialists, more layers. In 2026, that definition is starting to collapse under its own weight.
“Scaling up is not going to mean hiring more people,” Chevalley says. “In 2026, agencies are going to look much leaner on the surface – but underneath they’ll have a much stronger operating model.”
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That operating model, she believes, becomes the real engine of scale: powered by automation, AI-assisted decision-making and systems designed to remove friction from day-to-day work.
Real scale, in this context, isn’t about size, it’s about resilience. “Scale in 2026 is not going to be measured by people,” Chevalley adds. “It’s going to be measured by resilience, speed and agility.”
At the heart of that shift is operating infrastructure – the layer that connects planning, activation, measurement and optimization in real time.
“Operational infrastructure is the connective tissue of all your advertising operations,” Chevalley says. “Without it, everything remains fragmented and inefficient, and you lose valuable traction in the market.”
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As media ecosystems become more connected, the agencies that thrive will be those that invest in orchestration: systems that allow teams to work smarter, faster and with greater visibility across channels. It’s a move away from heroics and toward design.
As agencies continue to consolidate and media continues to expand, the pressure inside organizations isn’t going away. If anything, it’s accelerating.
The next era of agency scale won’t be built through headcount alone, or by pushing already-stretched teams harder. It will be built through smarter operating models, deeper integration and a willingness to rethink how media actually works in practice.
The full conversation with Chevalley explores what that transformation looks like and what agencies need to let go of if they want to keep up. Catch the full video interview here.
Fluency
Fluency is the first Digital Advertising Operating System (OS) that transforms paid media operations challenges into breakthrough outcomes by centralizing all major...