Online advertising quarterly: AI becomes a structural wedge
Big tech platforms are extending their advertising lead by deploying existing AI strengths to expand functionality and offer advertisers streamlined performance.
A cohesive model for chatbot advertising is still elusive. While in the process of defining its positioning, it currently impacts discovery more than search.
Scale no longer guarantees agency advantage: value capture is shifting away from providing services and towards owning the processes, tools, IP, and media.
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Online advertising in 2026: Amazon forces displacement
2 February 2026Recently awakened sleeping giant Amazon is using its vast resources to ramp up an aggressive open web stance, offering advertisers low take rates through its DSP.
Adtech firms risk destroying their own margins in response, so are increasingly extending their positions across the value chain as they compete to offer ‘end-to-end’ services.
2026 will be make or break for the agency holding company model as Omnicom resets and WPP’s need to see the benefits of its turnaround becomes urgent.
Advertising is in a structural shift due to AI and the video boom. AI tools are growing the reach and capabilities of smaller advertisers, fuelling robust demand.
WPP must challenge Publicis’s dominance in 2026 and show it is positioned to benefit from AI even as Omnicom and IPG combine to create a new global behemoth.
Amazon is taking the fight to adtech by strengthening its connected TV and retail media positions. Adtech is building partnerships and becoming more end-to-end in response.
Defined roles within the advertising ecosystem are a thing of the past: everyone is adapting by building out functionality to claim share as the constants underpinning advertising—attribution, discoverability, and regulation—change.
There is a new wave of M&A, partnerships and developments from agencies, adtech, and big tech in data and AI, as all sides position themselves to reshape the terms of online advertising at a time of maximum uncertainty.
Big tech platforms are leveraging their scale and AI investments in attempts to reset broad swathes of the market. Publishers are exposed; their way forward relies on asserting their value through direct audiences and collaboration on sector-wide innovations
Advertising has outgrown the UK's wider economy by 20 percentage points since 2000 thanks to online and advertisers in export markets, especially China, targeting sales in the import-dependent UK market.
If current trends held to 2030, advertising would reach 1.7% of UK GDP, over 50% higher than 2019—we believe this to be the least likely scenario as the UK already sustains higher ad intensity than major markets.
The next recession could be the moment when online ads growth corrects and then reverts to low single-digit growth in line with the economy. A 'soft landing' is also possible, while a surprise outperformance would require more drastic structural shifts.
Online advertising in 2026: Amazon forces displacement
2 February 2026Recently awakened sleeping giant Amazon is using its vast resources to ramp up an aggressive open web stance, offering advertisers low take rates through its DSP.
Adtech firms risk destroying their own margins in response, so are increasingly extending their positions across the value chain as they compete to offer ‘end-to-end’ services.
2026 will be make or break for the agency holding company model as Omnicom resets and WPP’s need to see the benefits of its turnaround becomes urgent.
Advertising is in a structural shift due to AI and the video boom. AI tools are growing the reach and capabilities of smaller advertisers, fuelling robust demand.
WPP must challenge Publicis’s dominance in 2026 and show it is positioned to benefit from AI even as Omnicom and IPG combine to create a new global behemoth.
Amazon is taking the fight to adtech by strengthening its connected TV and retail media positions. Adtech is building partnerships and becoming more end-to-end in response.
Defined roles within the advertising ecosystem are a thing of the past: everyone is adapting by building out functionality to claim share as the constants underpinning advertising—attribution, discoverability, and regulation—change.
There is a new wave of M&A, partnerships and developments from agencies, adtech, and big tech in data and AI, as all sides position themselves to reshape the terms of online advertising at a time of maximum uncertainty.
Big tech platforms are leveraging their scale and AI investments in attempts to reset broad swathes of the market. Publishers are exposed; their way forward relies on asserting their value through direct audiences and collaboration on sector-wide innovations
Advertising has outgrown the UK's wider economy by 20 percentage points since 2000 thanks to online and advertisers in export markets, especially China, targeting sales in the import-dependent UK market.
If current trends held to 2030, advertising would reach 1.7% of UK GDP, over 50% higher than 2019—we believe this to be the least likely scenario as the UK already sustains higher ad intensity than major markets.
The next recession could be the moment when online ads growth corrects and then reverts to low single-digit growth in line with the economy. A 'soft landing' is also possible, while a surprise outperformance would require more drastic structural shifts.