10 Predictions for 2026

Roll over Nostradamus, we’ve put our heads together for a 2026 reckoning, concerning digital marketing (and beyond!)

1. AI will continue to ingest the world. Next year AI ad buying will move from speculation to reality. 

2. Open AI will become a major new advertising platform. It may be janky at first but it will get good quickly. It will partially disrupt them, but it will also simply join Google, Meta, Amazon as an ongoing reality for ecommerce.

3. Surprisingly, the AI bubble won’t burst - although the bubble of think pieces and worried podcasts about it might. Bubbles don’t burst when they’re expected to - and all the commentary on the idea has warded it off (for now).

4. We will see more turbulence at network agencies struggling with automation internally and AI-creatives competitively. 

5. The new head of AI at Apple, Amar Subramanya, will nail agentic shopping, combining Apple Pay with Apple’s tight control of the app store and everything which happens on the iPhone.

6. We will hear a lot about ‘generative interfaces’ - with Google’s generative web browser Disco already testing in the US. 

7. The fact that a big brand has done an AI-only creative will no longer be news.

8. Agencies who have assumed that more automation means less troubleshooting and have under-invested in human problem solvers will begin to be exposed.

9. Waymo go ahead with their London launch and all of their cars end up in the Thames. Or they all get stuck at the end of narrow streets in the City.

10. And finally, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey kick-starts a craze in which rich kids take to the high seas in search of enchanter-infested islands and new dawns.