The global advertising and media industry entered 2026 at a pivotal point of media transformation. The convergence of artificial intelligence (AI), changing consumer behaviour, privacy regulation, fragmented media consumption, and geographic economic uncertainty is fundamentally reshaping how brands invest in marketing and media. While global advertising expenditure continues to grow, marketers and agencies face increasing pressure to demonstrate measurable return on investment, improve efficiency, and adapt to rapidly evolving digital ecosystems. Australia reflects many of these global trends while also experiencing unique local market dynamics driven by media concentration, changing consumer media habits, economic conditions, and poor local government decisions causing economic instability.
In this perspective, I’ll outline the key challenges and opportunities in global and Australian advertising media spend, the major shifts in client marketing priorities for 2026, emerging media trends, the impact of AI on the media industry, and the evolving priorities from a RyanCap and Cosmo5 perspective.
Global Media Spend: Challenges and Opportunities
Global advertising expenditure is expected to continue growing through 2026, driven primarily by digital platform channels, retail media, connected television (CTV), creator economies, and AI-enabled marketing technologies. However, growth remains largely uneven across markets and media categories.
Several major challenges are influencing global media investment decisions. Economic uncertainty and budget pressure. Ongoing geopolitical instability, inflationary pressures, and slowing economic growth in some markets continue to create caution among advertisers. Marketing teams are increasingly required to justify expenditure through measurable business outcomes. Consumers now engage across multiple platforms, devices, and content ecosystems. This fragmentation creates challenges in planning, measurement, frequency management, and attribution.
The decline of third-party cookies, increased privacy legislation, and platform restrictions continue to disrupt traditional audience targeting and measurement capabilities. Rising media costs for premium inventory across digital video, connected television, retail media, and major social platforms pressure marketing efficiency. Cross-platform measurement remains one of the industry’s largest unresolved challenges, limiting marketers’ ability to accurately evaluate campaign effectiveness. Whilst several companies have launched highly competing models, this is still in its infancy as a tendered proposition for clients. Digital growth is largely linked to the sales 'drug' for clients meaning continuous upward spend has been and will continue to be the trajectory.
Opportunities for CMOs and Agencies
Despite these challenges, significant opportunities exist. AI adoption is enabling marketers to improve planning, creative development, media optimisation, personalisation, and measurement at unprecedented scale.
Retail media expansion. Retail media networks continue to attract substantial investment due to their strong first-party data capabilities and measurable commercial outcomes.
Connected television growth. Streaming platforms and ad-supported video services provide brands with increasingly addressable, premium video environments. Programmatic will significantly contribute to television growth by curating bespoke campaigns linked by attribution and AI capability. Companies such as Foxcatcher are at the leading edge of this technology and will see growth driven by these client needs.
Creator economy saturation and maturation. Influencer and creator partnerships are evolving into strategic brand-building channels rather than tactical social media activities.
First-party data strategies. Organisations investing in customer data platforms and owned audience ecosystems are creating sustainable competitive advantages.
Australian Advertising Media Market
Australia’s advertising market remains highly digitally concentrated, with strong growth expected in video, retail media, social platforms, and digital audio.
Key Challenges
Australian marketers face several specific issues, both macro and micro. A significant proportion of advertising expenditure remains concentrated among a small number of global digital platforms. Consumer confidence and discretionary spending remain vulnerable to economic fluctuations, affecting advertiser investment patterns.
Talent shortages.
There continues to be strong demand for specialists in AI, analytics, performance marketing, commerce media, and data strategy.
Media measurement complexity.
The fragmentation of television, streaming, retail media, and digital platforms creates increasing measurement challenges.
Key Opportunities
Retail media acceleration. Australian retailers continue expanding their advertising ecosystems, creating new channels for performance and brand investment.
Streaming and connected television growth. Consumer migration toward streaming services provides opportunities for targeted premium video advertising.
Digital audio and podcasts. Podcast audiences and digital audio consumption continue to expand, creating opportunities for highly engaged audience targeting.
AI-driven productivity. Australian marketers are increasingly adopting AI tools to improve campaign effectiveness, creative production, and operational efficiency.
Client priorities in 2026 demonstrate several significant market shifts.
Artificial Intelligence Everywhere. AI is becoming embedded across the entire marketing value chain, including media planning, creative generation, campaign optimisation, analytics, and customer experience.
Retail Media Networks. Retail media continues to become one of the fastest-growing advertising categories globally, attracting both brand and performance budgets.
Connected Television and Streaming. CTV continues to gain market share as advertisers seek premium digital video environments with improved targeting capabilities.
Commerce Media Expansion. The convergence of advertising, retail, payments, and commerce ecosystems continues to accelerate. This means that systems that enable marketers and agencies to execute media strategies at pace with technology will win in 2026 and beyond.
2026 Media Outlook
The outlook for media in 2026 remains positive despite ongoing disruption. Organisations that successfully combine artificial intelligence, first-party data, creativity, measurement, and customer-centricity will achieve competitive advantage.
Marketing is evolving from a communications function into a strategic growth driver, with CMOs increasingly acting as enterprise transformation leaders with the C suite. Success will depend on balancing technological innovation with human creativity, maintaining consumer trust, and demonstrating measurable business impact in an increasingly complex and fragmented media landscape.
First published by Adnews Ad Dollars: Where to Next?! Special Report, 1st Oct 2026
