🎯 IAB Shows Advertising Trend

Hi, Marketers!

The center of gravity in advertising has moved, and everyone is adjusting under pressure.

TREND

IAB Shows Advertising Trends Under AI

👀 What’s happening: According to a study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), by 2026, nearly 40 percent of all ads are expected to use generative tools. One person can now ship broadcast ready video in hours using models that clear minimum quality thresholds. Agencies adopt it fast because clients demand speed, scale, and savings. Craft once reserved for teams becomes software.

📈 Growth impact: This resets labor economics. Most production roles cannot compete with near zero marginal output and infinite iteration. Fees compress. Headcount shrinks. Generic creative floods channels, lifting frequency but lowering signal. The remaining value moves upstream to concept, taste, and brand systems that guide machines.

🎯 Key takeaway: AI does not end creative advantage. It concentrates it. Average teams lose relevance. Elite groups use AI as leverage to express sharper ideas faster. Expect fewer vendors, higher stakes, and share flowing to creative operators.

BBC

BBC Crosses from Promotion into Platform-Native Programming

👀 What’s happening: BBC has agreed to produce original shows designed specifically for YouTube. This is not repackaged TV or social clips. It is native programming built for platform audiences, with advertising outside the UK. The move follows YouTube surpassing BBC’s combined channels in UK viewership.

📈 Growth impact: Historically, BBC marketing treated platforms as distribution rails that pointed back to owned environments like iPlayer. This breaks that model. Content is now optimized for the platform first, monetized there, and only selectively reused elsewhere. That shifts budgets, weakens first party data leverage, and normalizes revenue sharing with platforms that already control reach and discovery.

🎯 Key takeaway: This reflects a hard truth. YouTube is now the main stage. BBC are not just choosing it, they are adapting to it. Dependence deepens, margins thin, but relevance now lives where attention already sits.

RETAIL

Retail Media Moves Into the Aisle With Proof

👀 What’s happening: Albertsons is scaling in store digital ad screens fast, expanding from an 80 store pilot to roughly 800 locations in 2026. The shift is backed by an in house measurement system claiming true incremental lift, not proxy attribution, and by advertiser demand for unified omnichannel buys.

📈 Growth impact: This stresses how retail media budgets get justified. Screens now compete with CTV and social on measurable sales lift, pushing CPMs up while raising expectations. If a grocer can prove 14 percent lift at store level, brands will reallocate spend away from weaker mid funnel channels.

🎯 Key takeaway: Expect in store media to become a core performance lever, not a test. The opportunity is scale with accountability. The risk is shopper fatigue and retailers losing trust if screens multiply faster than measurement holds.

READ MORE

Let the Future Come to Your Inbox

Stay ahead without drowning in information. We turn the most important signals across AI, tech, marketing, and future products into 5-minute reads you can actually finish.

• AI Secret uncovers what really matters in AI
• Bay Area Letters decodes tech and business shifts from Silicon Valley
• Robotics Herald tracks how robots move from labs into daily life
• Marketing Secret breaks down real growth and go-to-market playbooks
• The Hardwire explores hardware, consumer tech, and what’s coming next
• Oncely helps you discover the next wave of AI products and launches

TOGETHER WITH US

AI Secret Media Group is the world’s #1 AI & Tech Newsletter Group, reaching over 2 million leaders across the global innovation ecosystem, from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft to top AI labs, VCs, and fast-growing startups.

We've helped promote over 500 Tech Brands. Will yours be the next?

Email our co-founder Mark directly at mark@aisecret.us if the button fails.