WFA strategic partners predict what to watch in 2026

Capability takes over as No. 1 growth lever

Matt Wardle, Head of Capability, North America, Oxford SM

2025 was the year of structural changes, from Unilever’s global overhaul to the Kimberly-Clark acquisition of Kenvue and the Kraft Heinz split. McKinsey research says 50% of executives anticipate another redesign within the next two years.

Such re-organisations create leaner marketing functions, not necessarily smarter ones, and we predict that 2026 will be the year capability replaces structure as the primary organizational growth lever. Why? The same reason demand generation eventually trumps financial engineering for driving sustainable growth. Growth comes from teams making better decisions than competitors. This is a capability outcome, not an org-design one. 

Output remuneration, integration and inventory media

Ruben Schreurs, Group CEO of Ebiquity

As the agency holding companies transform their businesses into vertically integrated marketing operating companies, that’s accelerating several critical changes that are important for brands. Firstly, remuneration models are evolving towards output and outcome-based models (41% of marketers plan to deploy outcome-based models in 2026).

Secondly integration of creative and media is the new norm for major brand advertisers (75% of marketers in the same study plan greater integration in 2026). Finally, principal/inventory media usage continues to grow, as the ‘agent’ role changes into full-service execution. Brands can benefit from all three with the right contractual and commercial frameworks, along with outcomes-based objectives supported by reliable effectiveness measurement and MMM.

Redefining sustainability

Jenny Bust, Managing Director, Revolt part of Anthesis

2026 will redefine what credible sustainability looks like for brands. Revolt’s Causes that Count 2026 study revealed that climate change remains a top five global concern. It also highlighted that people are increasingly feeling pressure where it hurts most: household finances, health and personal security, while rising mental health concerns reflect the cumulative impact of economic, environmental and geopolitical strain.

Sustainable marketing will have to shift from abstract ambition to practical relevance in response. Consumers want value, reassurance and meaningful support for their wellbeing. The brands that earn trust and loyalty will be those that combine sustainability with empathy, helping consumers feel supported rather than sold to.

AI gets a bigger role

David Jones, CEO and Founder, The BrandTech Group

The role of AI in advertising will continue to accelerate in 2026. We will see the first 100% Gen AI TV spot at the Super Bowl, and, across 2026, more brands will make Gen AI TVCs mainstream. Agentic workflows will become the norm, daisy-chaining AI agents to seamlessly go from social media trend to campaign idea, to finished creative, to live optimization – at infinite scale.

How LLMs perceive brands will be increasingly important, with people using AI assistants to make more and more purchases, from travel to weekly shopping, requiring brands to market less and less to people and more and more to the AI systems acting on their behalf.

Consent or pay is an opportunity for brands

Alex Dixie, Partner, Bird & Bird

Following the ICO's pivot toward "consent or pay" models, we expect this approach to become the norm for major publishers. For advertisers, this will be good news. Traditional cookie banner approaches have historically achieved opt-in rates of around 70%, but consent-or-pay rollouts achieve consent rates of 97%+. This means more addressable inventory for advertisers, with more reliable underlying consent.

Brands should engage with publishers now on the new commercial opportunities presented by these premium environments. They should also be reviewing their current data partnerships, contractual frameworks and consent management processes to ensure they can capitalise on these opportunities within compliant and trusted ecosystems. 2026 will signal whether the European model becomes a global blueprint for ad-funded businesses.

2026 is a return to first principles

Jon Wilkins, Founding Partner, The Intangibles 

With nine in 10 senior marketers telling the WFA that the world is less predictable than a year ago, it looks like we are in for another year where perspectives, politics, policies and people all collide in a messy turbulent world.

‘Having Principles’ isn’t necessarily the phrase that jumps to mind but evidence from last year suggests that businesses and brands who can navigate this crazy world with strong principles, values and narrative significantly outperform those without this compass in place. 2026 will be a year where the companies who see clearly, recommit to their principles or even, repoint or reimagine them, will navigate best. 

Humans re-enter the chat

Valeria Piaggio, Global Leader, Inclusive Growth, Sustainable Transformation Practice, Kantar

As the AI hype starts to settle, there is an opportunity for marketers to lead the way in making the case for ethical, human-centered AI.

In 2026 we can expect to see organisations turning their attention to equitable access to AI tools and education; challenging AI’s intrinsic biases; giving value and stage to human intelligence and creativity; and focusing on AI for the good of people and planet – not just profit.

Businesses will thrive by keeping humanity in the loop, overseeing AI outputs, and using these powerful tools ethically. 

The return of ‘agency’ (with a small a!)

Ryan Kangisser, Chief Strategy Officer, mediasense

Advances in AI have naturally transformed the way marketing communications are planned, activated and measured. However, the abundance of choice (i.e. touchpoints), variability in data quality (especially outside of mature markets), and scarcity of data points to prove impact (beyond efficiency), will see strategic talent return in a major way in 2026.

Successful brands (and agencies) will be those that lean into technology as the contributor and acknowledge strategic talent as the firepower. The key will be talent who can operate above, below and through the line, can cut through organisational inertia, and who can apply ‘agency’ to the abundant data and ‘insights’ available to make the smart choice, not the obvious one.

True partnership will become more valuable

Bruno Gralpois, Co-Founder & Principal, Agency Mania Solutions

Leading brand advertisers will start experimenting with formally decoupling AI-generated output from human expertise in agency contracts. Instead of paying blended hourly fees, clients will cap AI-driven production at near-cost rates while increasing variable compensation tied to management, judgment, orchestration and outcomes.

This matters for WFA members as it challenges decades of commercial negotiations focused on time as the primary currency – clients will pay less for scale, more for impact. Pilots from 2025 have already identified 15% lower total fees with higher senior-talent engagement. AI will cheapen execution – but make true partnership measurably more valuable.

Autonomous audience targeting by AI agents

Jamie Barnard, CEO, Compliant

Eighty-five percent of media leaders may have expressed concern about data and privacy when using AI in media, but 2026 will deliver the first fully autonomous buys using verified first-party data from both advertisers and publishers.

Building on December's breakthrough pilots (where PubMatic reduced set-up time by 87% and Viant's autonomous AI solution beat a human trader by 2.3x on a straight cost-per-action basis), AI agents will soon optimise campaigns, validating data integrity and compliance in real-time, replacing opaque programmatic processes with auditable machine-to-machine protocols such as AdCP.

While these will be isolated 'clinical trials' initially, they'll prove autonomous buying can be responsible, transparent and effective – addressing the trust gap that's holding adoption back.