Digital Marketing in 2026: Signals We’re Watching This Year

As we settle into 2026, a few patterns are already coming into focus. To help make sense of what’s ahead, we asked New Engen leaders to share what they’re paying closest attention to this year: from consolidation and shifting media power, to changing measurement norms and the rise of creator-led storytelling, here’s what we’re keeping a close eye on in 2026.

Justin Hayashi | Chief Executive Officer

• Media consolidation will accelerate as scale becomes non-negotiable. In 2026, consolidation across media and streaming will continue to accelerate, not because companies want to merge, but because many won’t have another viable path forward. As audience attention fragments, content costs rise, and subscriber growth slows, scale becomes essential to survival—allowing companies to spread costs, reduce duplication, and offer advertisers more unified reach. Moves like Pinterest’s acquisition of tvScientific show that scale is now being pursued not just through content, but through data and measurement as well. Consolidation won’t solve every structural issue in media, but it remains one of the few levers left to stabilize economics in a fragmented attention economy.

• Premium inventory will become more centralized (and more expensive). As media companies consolidate, control over premium inventory will concentrate in fewer hands, shifting leverage away from advertisers and toward sellers. This won’t eliminate choice, but it will firm up pricing and make negotiations—especially in upfront and long-term commitments—more rigid. With fewer players controlling larger, more integrated audiences, CPMs will continue to harden, and buyers in 2026 will need to be more intentional about where they push for efficiency versus where they pay for certainty and scale.

• CTV will gain scale, but not simplicity. Consolidation across linear, streaming, and digital platforms will give connected TV more scale and consistency, but not more clarity. Larger media entities will be able to offer broader, cross-platform packages that look compelling on paper, especially for brand advertisers, while challenges around measurement, transparency, and true comparability persist. In 2026, the opportunity in CTV will be real, but navigating it effectively will require more sophistication, not less.

• AI fatigue will recenter the value of real creator content. AI fatigue is already emerging and will intensify as fully AI-generated ads and content lose their novelty. As consumers develop a bias against creative that feels obviously synthetic, performance will follow, creating renewed value for real creator content and UGC that feels human, imperfect, and culturally grounded. In 2026, AI will remain a powerful tool behind the scenes, but content that leads with authenticity will stand out more than content that showcases automation.

Alice Woo | Chief Creative Officer

• Creative intelligence will outperform media optimization. As platforms automate more of bidding and targeting, creative becomes the primary performance lever. Brands that deeply understand what creative is working, why it works, and for whom will outperform those still relying on media tweaks. Creative intelligence becomes the new growth engine, not campaign structure.

• Closed-loop, AI-powered creative systems will become the new competitive moat. The old cycle of “brief → produce → launch → react” is too slow. Leading brands will operate in fast, regenerative loops where insights immediately feed new concepts. Creative will be refreshed continuously, made possible by AI-powered operating systems. This approach becomes difficult to copy and becomes a true competitive advantage. (Originally published by The Current on December 29th, 2025). 

• AI will become every marketer’s co-strategist. AI won’t replace strategists, but it will fundamentally change how they think. Teams that use AI for research, pattern recognition, idea expansion, and iteration will move significantly faster. Human judgment and taste will still lead, but AI will become the default starting point for strategic thinking.

• Creator-led storytelling and AI-optimized production will drive the best performance. Creator content will continue to win on mobile platforms because it’s fast, native, and culturally fluent. However, polished production will still matter for brand moments, trust-building, and certain verticals. The strongest results will come from teams that know when to use creators, when to use studio polish, and how AI can enhance both.

• Persona-driven content will become the engine of performance, and AI will be what makes it possible. Platforms are moving toward broad targeting, which means creative—not media—now determines who you reach. To win, brands will need content tailored to different personas, lifestyles, and motivations. Historically, producing that level of variation was impossible at scale. In 2026, AI-powered systems will make persona-aligned creative finally production-feasible. It will help teams generate, test, and iterate content for every micro-audience a brand wants to convert.

Ashley Hill | SVP of Growth, Affiliate

• AI will elevate affiliate, forcing a new measurement conversation. Affiliate is uniquely positioned for the rise of AI-powered search and shopping, with commissionable links and publisher content already fueling a meaningful share of what LLMs surface today. The challenge won’t be access, it will be visibility. By the end of 2026, the teams that win won’t just be the ones showing up in AI-driven experiences, they’ll be the ones pushing for smarter ways to understand where their content appears and how to quantify its impact.

• Upper-funnel affiliate will become non-negotiable. Affiliate can no longer be treated as a bottom-of-funnel or loyalty-only channel. Creator partnerships, editorial placements, and performance PR are now essential drivers of awareness and consideration. Agencies and brands that continue to rely solely on discount-driven partnerships will fall behind, while those investing in content-led, full-funnel affiliate strategies will be better positioned as consumer discovery continues to evolve.

• Creator measurement will force a reckoning. Pressure is mounting to prove performance across creator and influencer partnerships, especially when those efforts sit higher in the funnel. While affiliate has helped tie creators closer to conversion, impressions, awareness, and influence remain difficult to measure cleanly. By 2026, brands will either need to accept new frameworks for evaluating upper-funnel impact or demand better tools to fairly assess creator performance.

• Affiliate fraud will get more sophisticated, and more expensive. Fraudulent behavior in affiliate programs is becoming more creative, harder to detect, and increasingly costly for brands that aren’t actively monitoring their programs. While fraud detection tools are improving, awareness remains the biggest gap. In 2026, agencies that can proactively identify, explain, and act on fraud signals will play a critical role in protecting client investment and pushing the industry toward greater transparency.

• The “set it and forget it” affiliate mindset will finally break. Affiliate is often misunderstood as a low-effort, low-cost channel, but in reality it requires constant optimization, relationship management, and strategic investment. As programs scale across creators, content partners, and offline integrations, brands will need to rethink how they value affiliate expertise. Those who treat affiliate as an active, evolving growth engine—not a passive line item—will unlock its full potential in 2026 and beyond.

Kevin Goodwin | SVP of Strategy, Growth

• One tier-two platform will buy its way into measurement credibility. One of the major tier-two media platforms will acquire a measurement provider in an effort to prove real performance and defend its place in the media mix. As brands demand clearer answers on incrementality and impact, platforms that lack credible measurement will struggle to compete for budget. This move won’t be about innovation as much as validation. Platforms like Snapchat or Pinterest will need stronger proof points to justify continued investment, especially as scrutiny around platform-reported performance increases.

• Meta will be forced toward a true full-funnel buying model. As budgets tighten and scrutiny increases, advertisers will push harder for tools that support intentional full-funnel planning. A true brand-and-demand product—one that allows advertisers to explicitly allocate budget between awareness and performance outcomes—would be a meaningful step forward. Today, that kind of control doesn’t really exist. A move by Meta toward a more transparent, full-funnel buying framework would signal a shift away from black-box optimization and toward clearer strategic intent, even if it comes at the cost of platform simplicity.

• 2026 will be organic’s year (for better and worse). Organic social will become a major priority and investment area for brands, particularly across short-form formats like Reels and TikTok. As paid efficiency fluctuates, brands will look to organic content as both a growth lever and a hedge against rising costs. At the same time, many brands will misfire by overextending into platforms they don’t fully understand. Nowhere will that be more evident than on Reddit, where well-intentioned organic strategies risk backfiring if they prioritize volume over genuine community value.

• Brands will overestimate their ability to “win” Reddit. Reddit will continue to attract brand interest, but most brands will struggle to use it effectively. Treating Reddit like another social feed—or forcing an organic presence without understanding community norms—will dilute impact and invite backlash. In 2026, we’re likely to see a few high-profile brand missteps play out publicly, with real consequences for brand perception and revenue. The brands that succeed on Reddit will be selective, patient, and genuinely value-driven. Everyone else will learn, often expensively, that not every platform rewards scale, and not every organic strategy is worth pursuing.

Hunter Poole | VP of Brand Partnerships, Solutions

• Creator aesthetics will become the new language of TV and streaming. Traditional TV and streaming production will continue to adopt TikTok-native aesthetics at scale, not just in advertising, but in how shows themselves are produced. Creator-style captions, fast-cut editing, and platform-native pacing are becoming the default for reaching Gen Z audiences. This isn’t a creative shortcut, it’s a recognition that younger viewers have been conditioned to expect this visual language, with social platforms serving as the reference point for how content should look and feel.

• Streaming discovery will look more like social, and brands will begin to follow. Streaming platforms are rapidly adopting social-media-inspired discovery experiences, with swipeable, vertical feeds and TikTok-style browsing becoming standard. As the line between professional production and creator content continues to blur, smart brands will stop producing separate “CTV ads” and instead repurpose creator content directly for streaming environments. The brands that win will be the ones embracing creator aesthetics early and meeting audiences in the formats they already engage with.

Courtney Bittelari | Senior Director, Analytics

• Most teams will stop treating one platform as the single source of truth. Measurement will rely on multiple signals working together. Platform reporting, incrementality tests, and modeling will each play a role. The story isn’t that attribution goes away, it’s that it no longer carries the final word on performance. As this shift continues, “source of truth” thinking will start to break down. Strong measurement strategies will focus less on declaring a winner and more on understanding how different signals complement each other to inform better decisions.

• Incrementality testing will shift from a special project to a baseline question. Brands won’t test everything, but they will expect a clear answer to what changed because of media dollars invested. Simple tests with clear guardrails will win over complex approaches that stall or never launch. Incrementality will increasingly be used as a practical decision tool, not an academic exercise. The value won’t come from perfection, it will come from clarity that teams can actually act on.

• The biggest evolution in MMM will be speed and clarity. Clients will care less about model sophistication and more about how quickly results can inform planning. If a model can’t guide real budget decisions, it will lose relevance. “Decision-ready” MMM will matter more than methodological complexity. The models that stick will be the ones that help teams move faster and plan with confidence, not the ones that take months to explain.

• More companies will realize that buying tools doesn’t equal having a measurement strategy. Confusion around ownership of inputs, interpretation, and action will slow progress. Strong setups will clearly define who owns what between internal teams and partners. When no one owns measurement end to end, it breaks down. The brands that make progress will be the ones willing to clarify accountability, even when it’s uncomfortable.

• Leadership teams will become more comfortable with ranges and directional guidance. Measurement that explains uncertainty clearly will be more credible than overly precise numbers. Confidence intervals and ranges won’t signal weakness, they’ll signal honesty. As expectations mature, transparency around uncertainty will build more trust than exact answers that don’t hold up.

As 2026 continues to take shape, we’ll keep tracking how these shifts play out across platforms, channels, and measurement frameworks. To stay close to what we’re seeing, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn for ongoing POVs from our teams.