CTV Expected to Lead Way As Ad Industry Grows in 2026, Mediaocean Study Says

After the uncertain business outlook that clouded last year, 2026 is likely to be a growth year, according to a new report from Mediaocean.

According to the company’s first half advertising outlook survey, marketers plan to selectively increase investment. Those incremental dollars will come to channels marketers believe provide measurable outcomes, richer creative formats, and tighter connection to consumer behavior.

Connected TV and other forms of digital video, AI-driven environments, and creator-led media stand to benefit most, while traditional formats enter 2026 with continued budget pressure, the survey found.

The Mediaocean report also found that generative AI remains the most important consumer trend, cited by 70% of marketers. Marketers expect AI to have a role in the way consumers search, engage with brands, create content, and solve problems.

The survey found that marketers are heading into 2026 with renewed confidence.

CTV and digital display/video are tied at the top of the last of media channels expected to grow, with 63% of marketers planning to increase spending in each. 

Together, premium streaming and digital video form the backbone of 2026 media investment, supported by their ability to reach audiences at scale with clearer performance signals. 

Social platforms follow at 61%.

Two emerging categories—AI media (54%) and influencer/creator marketing (53%)—show some of the most accelerated gains.

On the other hand, traditional media is expected to lose ground. Local TV, national TV, and print face the sharpest cuts (36%, 34%, and 49%, respectively) as budgets shift toward channels that appear to provide greater precision, flexibility, and dynamic optimization. 

While enthusiasm for AI remains high among marketers, adoption patterns reveal a steep maturity curve. The survey shows marketers gravitating toward using AI in ways that directly support insight generation and campaign performance.

Data analysis (43%) and market research (43%) again are the top use cases, reflecting AI’s ability to simplify decision-making and process complex datasets. Adoption is expanding into creative and activation-focused areas, such as creative development (33%), campaign optimization (31%), creative personalization (23%), and campaign orchestration (19%). 

This shift signals that AI is no longer limited to back-end intelligence. It is increasingly shaping how concepts are built, iterated, and delivered across platforms, the report said.

Marketers said the top barriers to employing AI were data quality or access issues (42%), difficulty connecting AI insights across multiple systems (41%), brand safety or compliance concerns (40%), and integration challenges with existing tech stacks (39%). Those are all areas where AI has the greatest potential to create value, but progress requires cleaner data, stronger interoperability, safer guardrails, and more cohesive system design, the report said.

Marketers are entering 2026 with a clear mandate to make channels work better together. Expectations for cross-channel orchestration continue to rise, yet the infrastructure required to support it remains deeply fragmented. Managing audience, performance, and creative across an ever-expanding omnichannel environment is difficult and as budgets shift toward CTV and AI-driven environments, the challenge is no longer buying across channels—it is understanding how those channels interact. 

AI is adding both innovation and operational tension to this equation as marketers struggle to deploy AI responsibly while maintaining quality, control, and consumer trust.

“As AI becomes more deeply woven into the media lifecycle, the advantage won’t come from adopting even more tools—it will come from orchestrating them,” said Aaron Goldman, CMO at Mediaocean. “This research shows marketers are ready to move from experimentation to execution, but fragmented systems are slowing progress. Smarter, more connected foundations are what turn AI insights into action at scale.”  

This year’s survey marks the debut of sustainability/carbon impact of media and technology as a tracked trend, with 17% of marketers now monitoring the environmental footprint of digital advertising. Its emergence reflects growing expectations for transparency, responsibility, and environmentally conscious decision-making.

By contrast, the share of marketers citing e-commerce as a key issue declined to 27% after years of heightened pandemic-era relevance. As shopping behavior stabilizes, marketers appear to be reallocating attention toward the forces reshaping discovery, engagement, and conversion, namely AI and video-first platforms. 

The data points to a consumer landscape that’s faster and more multidimensional than ever, the report said. While Gen AI remains the undisputed leader, 2026 also will be shaped by rising influence of streaming, social video, and sustainability—which combined with shifts in privacy, politics, and policy are shaping a new foundation for the next phase of marketing strategy. 

The report concludes that 2026 will reward marketers who lean into smarter, more connected, and more adaptive systems. “The future isn’t just about adopting new tools; it’s about orchestrating them into something smarter, faster, and truly future-ready,” it says.

The Mediaocean survey was conducted via SurveyMonkey in November 2025 and contains data from 320 respondents representing brands, agencies, media companies, measurement firms, tech platforms, and other marketing industry constituents.

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Samsung said its free ad-supported streaming platform, Samsung TV Plus, has surpassed 100 million monthly active users. Streaming hours on the platform increased 25% in 2025, the company said.

Samsung TV Plus has more than 4,300 channels globally and is available in 30 countries.

“Our focus remains on delivering premium, authentic experiences that connect our audiences around the world — and this year’s breakthrough interactive moments, live events, and innovative partnerships show just how powerfully that resonates,” said Salek Brodsky, senior VP & head of global, Samsung TV Plus.

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Gracenote, the content data subsidiary of Nielsen, said it named Bill Condon as its first head of advertising sales. Condon, who was VP of enterprise sales and partnerships at Xumo, will focus on growing adoption of Gracenote’s Content Connect CTV contextual ad platform.

“Across ad buying and selling, there is a growing interest in harmonizing content-level signals with audience-based approaches, yet visibility into the programming ads run in hasn’t kept pace,” Condon said. “I’m excited to join Gracenote as we bring context into CTV transactions and make it actionable at the show level.”