2026 Outlook: The Ad Industry Enters Its Most Turbulent Phase Yet

2026 Predictions and Premonitio…

The pace of change in advertising keeps accelerating, and 2026 is shaping up to be one of the most disruptive years so far. The patterns forming across CTV, AI, retail media, attribution, and emerging formats are pushing the industry toward a new operating model, one that demands accountability, validated impact, and far more transparency.

Below is a clear, direct breakdown of the major shifts ahead.

1. CTV’s Rapid Growth Will Trigger a Major Fraud Cleanup

Connected TV has expanded so fast that the market definition itself became blurry. When “CTV” can refer to Netflix on a phone, Disney+ on a laptop, or TikTok cast onto a screen, fraud naturally follows.

In 2026, expect a significant correction.

A revealing test from Vibe found 500 bid requests for a placement that should have generated around three, clear evidence of reseller duplication and misrepresented supply.

Many advertisers chasing cheap “premium” CTV inventory are discovering they were never buying what they thought they were. Anyone paying “ESPN prices” at $3 CPM is not buying ESPN. They’re buying trouble.

Platforms that control supply directly, such as Roku, are already reducing reseller layers to guarantee verified inventory.

The fraud problem will intensify before stabilizing, but advertisers will increasingly rely on real measurement to understand whether CTV is contributing meaningful performance. Fraud generates no incremental value, which is why direct buying and proper measurement will become the only reliable safeguards.

2. DOOH Will Finally Be Treated as a Performance Channel

Digital Out-of-Home will undergo a major repositioning in 2026.

Once a purely branding-driven category, DOOH is becoming increasingly measurable thanks to new attribution approaches and AI-based analysis. As these tools improve and become more accessible, advertisers will begin evaluating DOOH with the same performance mindset they apply to digital channels, focusing on real, incremental contribution rather than assumed reach. 

As measurability strengthens, budgets will follow, and advertisers will start demanding ROI proof from digital billboards in the same way they expect accountability from programmatic platforms.

3. Incrementality Becomes a Mandatory Standard

2025 was the year marketers talked about incrementality. 2026 will be the year they’re forced to implement it.

Boards, investors, and CFOs are increasingly unwilling to accept metrics that cannot distinguish real revenue from cannibalized or inflated results. Any company avoiding incrementality measurement will face internal pressure to explain why.

But the transition won’t be smooth.

Many teams will try to layer incrementality onto outdated attribution systems. Some vendors will present controlled experiments as the solution, even though real-world conditions rarely stay stable enough for clean tests.

The marketers who succeed will be those who adopt always-on, AI-driven incrementality models, the same approach Tapper applies to evaluating real performance across paid media.

By Q4 2026, expect a new default question in marketing meetings: “What’s the incremental ROAS?”

4. AI Will Flood the Market, But Only Outcomes Will Matter

“AI-first” will replace “mobile-first” as the year’s essential buzzword. Nearly every vendor will claim AI-driven optimization, personalization, or automation, and many of these solutions will amount to little more than thin layers built on top of external APIs, shiny labels with shallow impact. 

But genuine innovation will still emerge, with AI improving media buying efficiency, reshaping workflows through copilots, generating creative that adapts dynamically to performance signals, and driving automated campaigns with measurable outcomes. 

As the hype peaks, the market will quickly separate real value from rebranding, forcing vendors to prove their claims under real performance conditions rather than marketing language.

5. LLMs Will Introduce Ads, Creating an Entirely New Marketplace

The ad-free experience inside platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok will not last long. 

The economics are simple: operating LLMs is extremely expensive, and only a small minority of users pay for subscriptions. Major platforms have already acknowledged that long-term sustainability will require advertising. 

By late 2026, users should expect sponsored answers, ad-supported tiers, AI-generated product placements, and even “suggested responses” influenced by advertisers. 

The model will resemble search advertising more than anything else: paid results first, followed by organic responses. This shift will introduce an entirely new advertising ecosystem that brands must prepare for.

6. AI-Powered Content Feeds Will Compete with TikTok-Level Platforms

2026 will see the emergence of AI-native media platforms, apps that generate endless personalized video feeds without relying on human creators.

Examples already forming include:

• Sora (OpenAI)
• Veo (Google)

Both provide TikTok-style infinite scroll experiences powered entirely by generative models, with no creator payout obligations.

The first major player to scale user acquisition aggressively could create the next TikTok-level attention engine. Expect massive marketing budgets to enter this space as platforms race for dominance.

7. Retail Media Networks Will Multiply Across Every Industry

Retail media growth will not slow down; if anything, 2026 will introduce an explosion of new players. Any company with first-party data and recurring user traffic will look for ways to monetize it, including banks, insurance companies, coffee chains, apparel brands, and consumer apps. 

The margins are simply too attractive to ignore, and even a small ad slot inside a high-traffic product can generate revenue far above the core business’s profitability.

The challenges ahead:

• Fragmentation: Advertisers will face an increasingly crowded landscape. If “everything becomes an ad network,” media buyers will end up juggling an overwhelming number of platforms, dashboards, and logins.
• Execution: Tools like Smartly.io and Skai will become essential to centralize buying and creative versioning.
• Measurement: Unique datasets require AI-driven attribution to determine which platforms actually contribute to conversions.

Advertisers will increasingly rely on independent, cross-network incrementality models to understand which retail media investments actually drive outcomes.

8. Ad Fraud Will Intensify Before Technology Catches Up

Ad fraud will remain one of the industry’s biggest challenges in 2026. Global fraud losses are projected to grow from $100 billion in 2024 to $172 billion by 2028, meaning the problem will reach roughly $131 billion in 2026. As budgets expand, fraudsters will follow the money, making it harder for advertisers to trust platform-reported performance.

This matters because inflated or invalid traffic directly increases CPA. As fraud grows, more marketers will turn to tools like Tapper to verify whether their paid traffic is generating real, incremental conversions rather than driving up acquisition costs with non-converting clicks. In many cases, proving true incrementality leads directly to lower CPA, as wasted spend is exposed and removed from decision-making.

9. Additional Trends Worth Watching

Shorter predictions, but meaningful:

Mini-Apps on iOS Gain Traction

A major change to Apple’s commission structure will push more developers toward lightweight, specialized mini-apps. This will become a long-term growth segment.

AI-Driven Browser Wars Begin

New AI-native browsers, Perplexity, Opera Neon, and ChatGPT’s Atlas, will fragment traffic and weaken click-based tracking.

Privacy Regulation Softens Temporarily

Expect a brief loosening before the next U.S. election cycle resets the agenda.

Web Stores for Apps Will Surge

Legal pressure is forcing open distribution. Solutions like Appcharge make it easy to launch app web stores, and by late 2026, as much as 30% of app revenue may flow through them.

Closing Thoughts

After decades in adtech, the rule still holds: everything changes, all the time. The coming year will challenge measurement models, supply chains, optimization strategies, and the definition of what counts as an ad channel.

May 2026 bring:

• Cleaner CTV supply
• Verified incremental impact
• AI that actually delivers
• And audiences made of real humans

And if a few predictions miss the mark, let’s just call it a rare moment of humility.