CES 2026 felt like a reset button for the industry. As the first major event of the year, it set the tone for how media, data, and AI conversations will evolve this year. Less experimentation, more pressure on practical application and performance.
At the event, much of the focus moved from testing AI concepts to operationalizing them. Agentic AI took center stage, with companies like Viant, PubMatic, Magnite, and yes, Cognitiv showcasing AI agents designed to simplify planning, buying, and optimization. Across media, streaming, and creative platforms, the emphasis was on efficiency, integration, and real outcomes. 2026 is shaping up to be a year of learning how these tools work together across an increasingly complex ecosystem.
After seeing these developments in action, a few major themes became clear for media and AI this year.
1. Static personas are no longer enough
Multiple sessions reinforced the hard truth that personas only work if they translate into real, addressable people in activation. Strategic frameworks must ultimately become models and signals that can be acted on in real time. The gap between planning and execution remains wide, and brands are demanding it close faster. Companies with real-time infrastructure co-located with SSPs (like Cognitiv) are better positioned to translate intent into action, activating signals at the moment of opportunity rather than after the fact.
2. Speed is now the performance advantage
From brands like Clorox to agency leaders at Omnicom, the message was consistent. Post-campaign learning is too late. Fragmentation across platforms has slowed optimization, and the next phase of performance will be defined by real-time or near real-time decisioning. Optimization is increasingly happening inside the bidstream itself, powered by AI that learns and adjusts in real-time rather than after the campaign ends.
3. Retail media has officially gone full funnel
Retail media networks (RMNs) are no longer confined to onsite placements. With expansion into social and CTV, RMNs are becoming a core part of the media mix. What is fueling that growth is closed-loop measurement, especially for CPG, and the ability to connect exposure to actual purchase outcomes. Offsite success, however, requires nuance. Each channel plays a different role, and uniform ROAS expectations across platforms are no longer realistic.
4. Custom data will separate leaders from laggards
One of the clearest calls to action came from the retail media conversation. Advertisers should be asking for custom audiences and custom datasets today, rather than relying solely on pre-packaged segments that offer only a “best available” fit. Scale and flexibility still matter, but the next competitive edge will come from tailored data strategies, advanced modeling, and AI-driven analytics that reflect how consumers actually behave across channels. The shift is toward designing audiences around a brand’s specific goals, not forcing those goals into predefined segments.
5. AI is about efficiency and orchestration, not replacement
The AI-focused sessions leaned heavily toward workflow transformation. Agentic AI is freeing up time, modernizing legacy systems, and enabling teams to do work that was previously impossible. The real differentiator is not the tools themselves, but how leaders redesign workflows, centralize data, and orchestrate AI across teams. The greatest impact of agentic AI ultimately comes at the decisioning layer, where vertically integrated systems embed deep learning directly into the programmatic stack to evaluate, value, and act on every impression in real time.
Continuing the Conversation
If CES was any indication, 2026 will be the year when expectations finally catch up to what technology has promised for some time. Faster optimization, privacy-safe modeling, custom data strategies, and AI-driven efficiency will move from competitive advantages to table stakes.
For brands and agencies, the question is no longer whether these shifts are coming. It is whether your media strategy is already built to support them.
If we did not connect at CES, or if you would like to learn more about Cognitiv, please reach out to me at cschulte@cognitiv.ai or via LinkedIn.
