The media and consumer trends that will shape 2026

Christopher Francia, director, product development, client performance, Attention Arc: “The most overlooked story last year wasn’t a new technology, workflow or innovation; it was the industry’s continued acceptance that a large portion of digital media remains essentially unauditable and our collective reluctance to confront it directly. In recent years, agencies have been asked to do more with less, yet tolerance for budget inefficiency has paradoxically grown. This isn’t because it’s acceptable (it isn’t), but because it’s difficult to address. Despite layering new tools and processes into the ecosystem, fundamental measurement gaps remain that can’t be fully audited. Publicly, we say we’re solving this problem. Privately, we acknowledge how challenging it is. While the technology exists to improve accountability, the industry lacks strong structural incentives to prioritize it. Greater transparency and shared responsibility could help move this conversation forward rather than repeating the same cycle.”

Max Maharajh, founder, Be A Bear: “There’s a scene in Jurassic Park where Bob Peck locks his sights on a target and then a raptor pops up next to him and he mutters, ‘clever girl.’ In 2025, YouTube was that raptor. I was banging on about it all year, but it has been taking over televisions throughout 2025 and now it is going to host the Oscars. Brand-side marketers, you need to be building up your YouTube presence now.”

Ed Hayes, chief strategy officer, Bloom: “In October, Kodak returned to selling printable B2C camera film. It could be a small signal of a significant counter-revolution. Kodak famously drowned in the early 2010s digital media wave. Then, it felt like the brand had sunk so far it would never rise up. But people’s appetite for analog refuses to die. For a growing cohort, the most precious moments and memories deserve pictures made from more than pixels and bytes. Our brains love a convenient shortcut. But we also prefer many things to be tangible and understandable. Other signs include the explosive growth of Birkenstocks, the popularity of neo-soul artists like Olivia Dean and the rise of digital detoxing among Gen Z. A global readjustment would have huge implications for brands and the marketing mix, with higher value, higher interest categories changing behavior in favour of analog – a part return to permanence, slowness and humanity.”

Evan Horowitz, founder, Movers+Shakers: “In 2025, marketers obsessed over platforms, algorithms and formats, but missed the bigger shift: social is no longer a channel; it’s the operating system for modern marketing. The most effective brands aren’t using social to amplify campaigns; they’re using it to design them. Social insights should set the brief for your whole campaign, shaping strategy and creative. The smartest brands use TV, OOH and retail as sequels, scaling what has already proven itself in the feed. You don’t test TV spots any more; you test TikToks. This shift rewires how organizations operate. Speed, community feedback, and cultural proximity become competitive advantages, not nice-to-haves. Brands still treating social as distribution continue to lose market share. The future belongs to those who let social write the strategy and let everything else turn up the volume.”

Ian Orekondy, head of media, analytics and innovation, Method: “We tested AI-optimized targeting in 2025, but better targeting doesn’t solve persistent in-flight challenges. Even with ‘perfect’ targeting, the operational side of media is still massively underestimated. Firms like Cleantap.io, DoubleVerify and Fou Analytics provided new data in 2025 showing how TV platforms serve ads, regardless of the buying mechanics. Two camps have emerged: brands that lean into programmatic and brands that shy away from it, believing that directly purchased inventory eliminates fraud and viewability issues. Both approaches require vigilance. We’ve seen single optimizations (like catching a viewability issue) end up being worth six figures. For AI to work at optimizing targeting and overall ad quality and impact, you need the right third-party signals, layer on a decisioning engine and then connect them to platform-level APIs. Agencies that do this can drive huge value for brands and justify premium pricing.”

Stefan Hajek, head of creative, Designit: “In 2025, marketing controversies dominated headlines – American Eagle, Elf, McDonald’s – but the bigger story is a media system seemingly tailor-made to amplify outrage. Oxford’s word of the year, ‘rage bait’, reflects how algorithms reward provocation. Brands chasing virality risk eroding trust – a currency that takes years to earn and seconds to lose. Marketers must anticipate how campaigns will land before launch. Today’s consumers call out missteps instantly and once a message is live there’s no undo button. Doubling down after backlash only deepens the damage. Platforms incentivize outrage, yet audiences increasingly punish it. The remedy is for marketers and brands to prioritize empathy over engagement hacks and audience insight over algorithmic tricks. Going viral isn’t a win if it alienates the very people you seek to connect with. The ecosystem may be broken, but marketing doesn’t have to feed the beast. Brand equity is a long game, built on trust, authenticity and cultural awareness.”

Joshua Lowcock, president of media, Quad: “There was not enough conversation about how 2025 was the year media responsibility and brand safety died. AI has normalized ‘fakes’ and all things artificial, platforms have walked back their oversight and recent merger approvals added more confusion to the responsible media landscape. We also haven’t paid attention to the fact that, with AI models scraping everything, it may have been the year non-human traffic increased to the point of surpassing human traffic.”

David Gaspar, partner and Head of Innovation, Gather: “Women’s sports are still being talked about in a vacuum. Hardly anyone was talking about women’s sports as a key factor in their overall sports push. It is treated as a one-off, not as one aspect of an organization’s overall sports strategy. Not to mention the fact that only one or two leagues on the women’s side get attention from marketers when new women’s leagues are opening up opportunities seemingly every month. Sports are a cultural moment; they provide the opportunity to connect with consumers that few other industries can. Women’s sports are no different. I’d like to see the women’s sports conversation transform to be a part of the overarching sports conversation. It didn’t happen during this last year, but I expect it to in the future.”

Bryan Goodpaster, vice-president, foresight & cultural strategy, Marks: “2025 was the year marketing hit peak polarity, at once virtue signaling and facing outrage. Spotify’s ICE recruitment ads caused outrage with a lot of users. And yet, this same brand was also quietly making product changes that gave listeners more control and less algorithmic pressure in their daily lives. There was no campaign. Just more humane UX decisions. The real story is that modern brands now behave less like archetypal characters and more like politicians. They govern through contradiction, both capable of harm and productive change.”

Cat Botibol, business development director, Secret Cinema: “People have trained themselves to forget advertising the moment they see it – a direct consequence of the attention economy and optimizing for impressions. 2025’s marketing world has been dominated by stories of AI, budget efficiency, output and digital ROI, but no attention has been paid to the effect this relentless optimization has on actual people. What is the value of reaching 100 million individuals with instantly forgettable advertising? But people who attend exceptional brand experiences spend hours, not seconds, engaging with a brand. Our research shows that bespoke experiences build loyalty and improve perception, with 73% reporting stronger brand affinity afterwards. Global experiential marketing spend reached £96bn in 2024, surpassing pre-pandemic levels, because some brands recognize that something’s broken in the attention economy and that live events create the kind of neural encoding that actually sticks in people’s long-term memories.”

Tom Wild, head of strategy, Fuse: “In 2025, athletes became publishers in their own right – owning distribution, narrative and audience trust at a level once reserved for major publishing brands. Through podcasts, long-form video, direct-to-fan newsletters and controlled social ecosystems, athletes are no longer waiting to be covered; they are setting the agenda. Athletes now decide what moments matter, how setbacks are framed and which values are foregrounded. Just look at Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham. For brands, this fundamentally changes partnership logic: alignment matters more than amplification. The opportunity is not borrowed reach, but shared authorship. The risk of ignoring it is clear: marketing that feels imposed rather than lived. In a trust-deficient media landscape, athlete-owned storytelling is becoming one of the most credible channels brands can access.”

Pete Wallace, GM, EMEA & JAPAC, GumGum: Many 2025 headlines focused on the Omnicom merger, but what isn’t being talked about is the seismic shift that has happened within agencies themselves. Almost every holding company has sought to revamp its GTM strategy, attempting to showcase its expertise in data, technology and people, underpinned by owned assets. This, in turn, has evolved everything from pitching, skillset and the role of a media agency to the partnership of third-party publishers and technology. This has totally shifted the longstanding relationship of media agencies and partners. In some instances, this shift created combative relationships. It also opened the door to more scrutiny from advertisers and agencies alike to understand each partner’s value. The future of a successful media agency relationship is where the best data and technology rise to the top, enriching agency products.

Jared Belsky, CEO, Acadia: “In all the consolidation talk, the biggest consolidation underway has not been talked about: marketers starting to consolidate retail media, DTC media and national/integrated media. 75% of our RFPs over the last six months have called for this unique combination, with CMOs telling me they are frustrated by having this money artificially siloed. Most media agencies are not built to service at scale all three of those pursuits, as they are highly specialized. Agencies are going to have to adapt to keep up with this new marketer need.”

Chris Keenan, head of agency development, EMEA & APAC, StackAdapt: “We are firmly in a digital era, but I’ve been surprised by how little media attention has been given to physical store sales. Retail media trends have dominated headlines and for good reason, as deterministic audiences and closed-loop measurement are impactful. But even after 20+ years of e-commerce growth, more than 80% of sales still take place in physical stores. We should be obsessing over better connecting digital signals to in-store behavior and offline purchases, even if that means perfect 1:1 addressability is not possible. Channels like DOOH and direct mail are showing privacy-first, omnichannel strategies can be successful when powered by strong first-party data. Ensuring these channels complement retail media spend helps brands build trust in a landscape that’s becoming increasingly privacy-conscious. It wouldn’t hurt to speak more on physical store activations and building journeys that feel consistent no matter how someone interacts with a brand.”

Susan Lee Colby, founder, Grace Creative: “Last year was the year of aging. The 50+ market has changed, but marketers have not. While marketers obsess over Gen Z and Gen Alpha, they are blind to the 50+ audience, which holds 70% of disposable income and $86tn in wealth. That’s equal to the world’s third-largest economy. While this audience spends up to five times more on luxury, travel, wellness, home, finance, auto and even tech for themselves and their families, on average only 5-10% of marketing budgets target this audience. In 2025, advances in longevity and health span have radically redefined what growing older can be. Yet most brands still equate age with decline instead of the thriving economic and societal force that it is. When brands understand how to authentically market to this cohort’s desire to age in, not out, conversion, loyalty and revenue jumps. (Fun fact: In just over five years, the first millennials will start turning 50.)”

DJ Agahi, managing director, Sabio: “Once seen as something of an afterthought, over the past year, the momentum behind CTV advertising has grown rapidly, spanning BVOD, SVOD and AVOD/FAST. If advertisers believed they could afford to overlook CTV until now, the events of recent weeks have proved otherwise. With streaming giants Netflix and Paramount reportedly locked in a bidding war over Warner Bros Discovery, CTV has become a major talking point in adland and beyond. Any acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery would inevitably reshape the way advertisers plan and buy CTV, likely pushing it firmly to the forefront of media and advertising. It could also change how audiences consume content more broadly. Time will tell whether this shift will ultimately be for the better, but one thing is for sure, its impact will be immeasurable.”

Stuart Williams, head of planning, Adam&Eve\TBWA: “Influencer marketing is now worth $36bn globally. But we had to wait until October 2025 for definitive, peer-reviewed proof of the channel’s effectiveness, when the IPA released the industry’s first-ever influencer databank. Their research proved influencers can hold their own as a performance channel – but it’s as a long-term brand-building tool where they truly excel, delivering a similar ROI to linear TV. The biggest revelation is that this long-term ROI is significantly higher than what ‘standard’ paid social campaigns deliver. That finding should have made more headlines. For marketers, it should have been a call to arms to rethink how their brands show up on social, where total spend on paid, brand-authored content still dwarfs spend on influencers.”

Joe Churchill, founder, Fan Club: “Outdated perceptions of social media persisted in 2025. Too often, we’ve seen brands and agencies treat social platforms as places only to reach young audiences, when in reality we’ve long passed the tipping point and social is now ubiquitous. Everyone is on it in some form, with the fastest-growing demographic on YouTube being the over-55s. Despite this, strategies have often failed to recognize that social and digital content platforms are the most effective way to reach any audience, not just Gen Z or Millennials. This mindset needs to change. Social isn’t ‘youth media’ any more; it’s mainstream, multi-generational and central to how people consume content. Underestimating that means missing opportunities to engage audiences where they already are.”

Tom Stanton, head of planning, Anything is Possible: “Back in May, Mark Zuckerberg revealed to Stratechery his vision for the future, one where brands just hand him their bank details and Meta produces results. No creative thinking, no audience understanding, no strategy required. It’s a bleak future and should serve as a wake-up call. It’s not a vision I share. Connected channel strategies have proven they deliver results above and beyond single platform plans and media continues to fragment, requiring proper audience planning – a future we can all get excited about.”

Angharad Salazar Llewellyn, editorial director, Dept: “Social has undergone massive transformation this year, with the creator industry disrupting creative production beyond recognition. Clients across all scales and industries now expect talent to appear in social content as standard. This can come from three areas: creator/A-list talent, in-house creators or UGC creators. This has led to the rise of an entirely new role: the ‘in-house content creator’ affecting both agency-side and client-side (the government was even hiring one). Meanwhile, Instagram is testing TV broadcast in the US on Amazon Fire TV devices, where creators’ reels will appear on the big screen, blurring the line between broadcast and what that really means. In the UK, creator Angry Ginge’s win on I’m A Celebrity shows a clear shift in the power dynamic of what we understand by ‘celebrity’ – going from ‘streamer to mainstream’ in just a few years. It’s another key signal for how creators will dominate in 2026.”