Same expectations, new demands
Advertising hasn’t suddenly rewritten its playbook. The fundamentals still matter: reach the right audience, prove impact, and scale what works. What’s changed is the environment those expectations now live in. As algorithms take on more of the decision-making, performance is being shaped by automated systems. The result is a market that still wants the same outcomes, but demands different methods to get there.
For 2026, companies in the adtech ecosystem need to be aware of four key expectations as we move further into the algorithmic era.
1. AI is now impossible to ignore
If the last couple of years were about understanding where AI sits in the industry, 2026 is the year it cements itself into the adtech ecosystem.
“We’re moving from a position in the last 18 months of [AI] being experimental to actually becoming an embedded core capability for most of the adtech ecosystem” says Bradley Lewington, Adtech Sales Executive. “We’re seeing increased automation for bidding strategies, budget, planning and pacing, as well as increasing the efficiency across the entire creative process.”
60% of advertisers are now using AI for targeting and algorithm personalization, and a further 78% of brands use AI to optimize ad creative elements. This trend not only achieves a speed of output that is impossible with human hands, but targets adverts to the right audiences at the microscopic level. Clicks, shares, and watch times - just to name a few - are tracked using machine learning to put the right ad in front of the right person.
“The economics of advertising are being transformed. As the costs of production fall, the opportunities for advertisers multiply,” says David Cohen, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, reflecting how rapidly AI tools are already reshaping where and how brands create, optimise, and scale campaigns. “The pool of potential advertisers is growing, as it is easier than ever to plan, buy, optimize, and creatively connect with consumers utilizing new technologies across all forms of media.”
2. Click-Through-Rate (CTR) is on the decline
As AI pushes advertising forward, it’s also thinning out the ground beneath some of adtech’s older benchmarks. Click-Through-Rate is one of them.
Google’s integration of AI-generated answers into search results – specifically AI Overviews and AI Mode – is causing disruption to traditional advertising revenue models. Despite ad-spend’s growth, search users are receiving their answers without having to click through to a website or resource, coining the phrase ‘zero-click searches’.
Pew Research Center tested this with an analysis of 68,879 google searches: those who weren’t met with an AI summary clicked on a search result nearly twice as often as those who were (15% vs 8%). This has led to a 15-64% decline in organic traffic, with roughly 60% of searches yielding no clicks at all.
What this signals for adtech isn’t a drop in demand, but a shift in where value is being created. As more discovery happens through algorithms - from AI-generated answers to retail platforms and social feeds - budgets are moving away from visibility on search pages and towards environments further down the customer journey. Global ad spend continues to grow because brands are finding performance in new places, using systems that connect exposure to outcomes.
3. Protection against ad fraud is as important as ever
As more budget flows into automated systems, fraud follows the same path. The algorithmic layer that now decides where ads appear and how money moves also creates new surfaces for exploitation. From spoofed traffic and bot-driven engagement to manipulated inventory in CTV and in-app environments, fraudulent data is now distorting the very information that algorithms rely on to make their next decision.
“Global ad 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” reports Tapper. “As budgets expand, fraudsters will follow the money, making it harder for advertisers to trust platform-reported performance.”
The scale of those numbers is already shaping how the industry behaves. Brands are tightening verification standards, agencies are building fraud checks into planning and reporting, and platforms are under pressure to prove the quality of the environments they sell, not just the volume of impressions they deliver.
The rise of ad fraud is tied, in part, to the scale of the market itself. As digital advertising has expanded into a global, automated economy, it has created the kind of volume that attracts exploitation. Where attention and budget move quickly, so do those looking to divert them. In a market increasingly steered by automated decisions, the ability to protect the integrity of performance data is part of how long-term credibility, and long-term growth, is earned.
4. Agentic AI is just getting started
We’re still in the early days of agentic AI, but already we’re starting to see its abilities bleed into the advertising space.
Unlike traditional automation which follows pre-set rules, agentic systems can observe performance, make decisions, and act across campaigns with minimal human input. Today, you can create agents that prioritize areas such as performance, brand suitability or contextual alignment using agents that “evaluate context, apply brand guidance, and make real-time decisions at the impression level, which leads to safer, smarter, and more sustainable campaigns” – Scope3.
Over time, the role of these systems is likely to expand from execution to orchestration - coordinating planning, buying, measurement, and iteration as a continuous loop. For advertisers, that points toward a future where strategy sets the direction, and software handles much of the day-to-day movement of spend, turning media operations into an always-on, self-adjusting layer beneath the brand.
