The ad industry entered 2026 with mixed signals, as holiday shopping season optimism about consumer spending and channel diversification were tempered by warnings of a looming correction in AI valuations that could ripple across the broader economy.
That was the consensus from a McKinsey & Company panel at CES 2026, where executives offered their predictions on everything from macroeconomic risks to where marketers should place their bets.
Media cartographer Evan Shapiro opened with a sobering assessment of AI investment dynamics, describing what he characterized as a circular economy propping up inflated valuations. Six companies representing nearly two-thirds of the NASDAQ 100’s value have committed approximately $1 trillion to AI infrastructure, with much of that flowing between chip manufacturers, cloud providers, and AI startups through what Shapiro described as cash-back guarantees for future orders.
“On the day that Anthropic can’t send the check to pay Nvidia for the chips that they must buy, because they don’t have enough business to support what the requirement is, this whole thing falls apart,” Shapiro said. He drew parallels to the dot-com crash of 2000-2001, predicting a correction of similar magnitude within 12 months—though he emphasized that AI itself will survive just as the internet did. OpenAI, he suggested, may prove to be “the Netscape of this era” rather than the Amazon.
For performance marketers who have rushed to integrate AI-powered tools into their tech stacks, the implications are significant. A market correction wouldn’t eliminate AI capabilities, Shapiro said. But it could trigger consolidation among vendors. That would disrupt pricing models and force brands to reassess which AI investments deliver measurable returns versus — and which ones represent speculative bets on unproven technology.
In their ad forecast presentation, Madison & Wall founder Brian Wieser and Kate Scott-Dawkins, WPP Media’s global president for Business Intelligence, offered a more stable near-term outlook, with the first half of 2026 looking positive despite underlying risks. Both noted the potential for labor market shocks to introduce volatility. Still, they pointed out that consumer behavior remains resilient even amid tariff concerns.
Scott-Dawkins highlighted a significant milestone, noting that 2025 marked the first year retail media search spending surpassed total television advertising. The shift underscores the continued — perhaps permanent? — fragmentation of media budgets. It also signals the growing importance of commerce-driven channels where purchase intent is highest.
For brands and their agency partners, the retail media surge represents both opportunity and new ranges of complexity. Shoppers increasingly expect personalized, contextually relevant messaging at the point of purchase. But delivering on that expectation requires navigating a proliferating landscape of retail media networks, each with its own data standards and measurement approaches.
On the agency front, Wieser pushed back against persistent “dinosaur” narratives.
“Agencies will not die,” he said, adding that while holding companies face pressure, independent agencies are positioned for growth. The larger question is where investment in agency capabilities will concentrate , and that is likely to be in areas like retail media expertise and AI implementation where brands need specialized guidance.
Amanda Rubin, SVP of Revenue for in-game ad platform Frameplay argued that attention metrics need fundamental rethinking. After five years of industry discussion, she said, attention remains inconsistently defined—treated as currency by some, as a KPI by others, and frequently conflated with reach and frequency.
“My prediction going into 2026 and beyond is that attention is not equal,” Rubin said. “Attention is all about finding trust and figuring out where to capture the right eyeballs and the matrix of quantity and quality.”
She made the case for gaming as an undervalued attention environment, noting that player audiences rival social media in scale while commanding far less ad spend. The disconnect, she argued, stems partly from outdated perceptions. “We have to get rid of the word ‘gamer,’” Rubin said, pointing out that casual mobile gaming—solitaire, word games, Candy Crush — has made players of nearly everyone.
For performance marketers obsessed with efficiency metrics, Rubin’s argument presents a strategic question: Are brands over-indexing on familiar social platforms where attention is fragmenting and ad fatigue is rising?
On top of that is something potentially more concerning. Rubin wondered whether brands are doing so while ignoring environments where engaged consumers are actively choosing to spend their time. As the industry grapples with signal loss and measurement challenges across traditional digital channels, gaming’s combination of scale, engagement, and relatively uncrowded ad inventory may warrant serious reevaluation.
“Give attention a little bit more of a chance,” Rubin said, “and think about different ways to gain engagement than the typical social platforms that everyone's used to.”
