‘The year where the dust settles’: Digiday editors share 2026 predictions

The dust Jerde is referring to are 2025’s cliffhangers — Netflix’s planned acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming businesses (and Paramount Skydance’s rejection), the ripple effects of the Omnicom-IPG merger, and of course, generative AI’s impact on all of it. 2026 may not come with a shiny bow of completely answered questions, but some clarity around things — like ads on generative AI platforms, publisher AI monetization deals and agency hold co models — should be on the horizon.

“This year will be the year where the dust settles a little bit and maybe we can end 2026 with a firmer thesis about what 2027 would look like than we did, perhaps, at the start of this year,” Jerde said.

As 2026 starts to take shape, Digiday editors weigh in on what trends our staff has top of mind and what the new year could have in store for the industry.

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity.

Ads on AI platforms

Joseph: The big one is OpenAI and their long-gestating advertising plans. Will be interesting to see if they’re too late on that, given that Google is set to launch their own play at some point this year. And unlike OpenAI, they have a playbook that is tried and tested — battle hardened. That will be the big thing.

Jerde: To speak even more broadly — because it has ties in all of them — how AI is going to mature this year is going to be really critical to the success of publishers, to media agencies, of course, how OpenAI flirts with all of them through this will be really interesting to watch. But if the last two years was slow adoption, 2025 was the crash and burn, or test and trial phase, this will be the phase where we can see tweaks being made, maybe some layoffs pinned to AI use, whether appropriate or not to do so.

Major mergers and acquisitions

Peterson: Netflix [and] Warner Bros. Discovery. That’s going to be the big story of 2026. Does that happen and what are the knock-on effects of this? If Paramount’s hostile takeover attempt falls, what does Paramount then do? Do they make a play to merge with NBC Universal, because Comcast owns NBC Universal?…What’s Comcast going to do? What’s Disney going to do — especially Disney [in] 2026 supposedly is going to be when Disney appoints a new CEO, a successor to Bob Iger.

McCoy: Also, how much of these mergers, acquisitions, moves that these players are making are at the mercy, not just of the government, but of [President Donald] Trump himself? Which, is a knock on effect that we only have really scratched the surface of here as to as to how that all plays out.

Agency consolidations and turnaround plans

Joseph: It will be interesting to see how the Omnicom souped up proposition fares through [changes of the acquisition]. It will be given a real stress test than many people anticipated. Then, within that, how does WPP fair? That business is in a precarious spot. The CEO changed last year, some big clients walked away from the business, it dropped out of the FTSE 100. What this year means for WPP will be really interesting because if it does turn out badly — and they do end up being bought by someone — it’ll be the death nail for that whole hold co model.