Adtech is heading into a year of reinvention.
Thousands of attendees from the tech and media world are flying out to Las Vegas this week for the annual Consumer Electronics Show. Among them are reams of adtech executives who tend to use the sprawling expo as an opportunity to rehearse and roadtest their plans for the coming year.
Facing the disruption from AI and the declining economics of monetizing traditional web pages, adtech companies are being forced to rethink their strategies — and in some cases, their customers — while attempting to stay one step ahead of Big Tech.
“Adtech, if nothing else, is incredibly adaptable,” said Andrew Casale, CEO of the adtech company Index Exchange.
Here are some of the key storylines adtech executives are likely to be chewing over during their meetings in Vegas this week.
Adtech needs a solid AI story
AI was an adtech buzzword long before the arrival of ChatGPT, but investors now want companies in the space to unlock more value using the technology.
A raft of new AI startups has emerged in the adtech space, making use of generative AI to create ads and streamline marketers’ workflows. Meanwhile, existing players are attempting to define the meaning of “agentic advertising” and develop industry standards and protocols to govern how different AI agents should interact with one another.
Adtech companies are closely monitoring how AI is transforming the shopping experience. Will more consumers begin handing over the reins to AI agents for planning their next trip or completing their weekly shop? If so, that could give rise to a new form of advertising where agents advertise to other agents, rather than consumers, said Debra Aho Williamson, founder of the research and advisory firm Sonata Insights.
“Advertising right now is a pretty image or video aimed at a human designed to elicit a human emotion, but an ad between an agent doesn’t even look like an ad, it’s just a bit of code or numbers designed to cause one agent to take an action with another agent,” Aho Williamson said.
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And of course, adtech insiders are eagerly waiting for when — or if — OpenAI will finally reveal how it plans to integrate ads and whether they can grab a piece of the action there, too.
Out: Open web. In: Open video.
The rise of AI chatbots is threatening adtech’s bread and butter: serving ads on web pages.
Many publishers are entering 2026 on the back of hefty traffic declines last year, which some attribute to consumers getting the information they need from AI overviews or answer engines without needing to click through to a site. A report released in July from the analytics platform Similarweb found that the median “zero-click rate” — the number of users who didn’t click from Google’s results to a website — rose from 60% to 80% when they were met with Google’s AI Overviews.
Traffic declines typically precipitate drop-offs in programmatic ad revenue, the money publishers make by selling ads through automated auctions rather than through manual deals. The state of play means that publishers and the adtech companies serving them are once again laser-focused on revenue diversification this year.
Video, and increasingly the kind of video that winds up being watched on TV screens, is an important area of growth for everyone in the adtech ecosystem, said Bill Wise, CEO of the advertising management platform Mediaocean.
“Marketers want sight, sound, and motion advertising,” but the biggest spending advertisers are looking for more opportunities to advertise outside so-called walled garden platforms like Google and Meta that have restrictions on how brands can use their own data to inform their targeting, optimization, and measurement, Wise said.
“I don’t think there are any companies focused on CTV that aren’t having success right now,” Wise added.
The buy side and sell side are merging. But should they?
Intra-adtech competition is intensifying as players seek to expand their offerings beyond simply serving ads on web pages into new areas, such as streaming TV and retail media.
The maturation of the market has also led to a blurring of what was once known as the “buy side” (“demand side” tools that serve advertisers) and the “sell side” (“supply side” tech for publishers).
Demand-side platforms are promoting products that claim to have access to only the highest-quality inventory, like the latest hot TV shows. Supply-side platforms are increasingly making inroads with advertisers and agencies, promising, among other things, greater transparency over fees and precise placement of their ads.
The jury’s out as to whether the trend will continue apace or whether the two sides will ultimately bifurcate again. Casale, of Index Exchange — a sell-side player — said a similar dynamic played out in the early days of adtech, from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s.
“During that chapter, every platform serviced the buy side and the sell side, and there was a growing distrust with a business that was simultaneously having one conversation with the buyer, convincing them of low prices and great results, and a follow-up conversation the next minute with the publisher, convincing them of maximum yield and CPMs,” Casale said. CPMs refer to the cost to reach a thousand impressions (“cost per mille”).
“I don’t see how any modern technologies address that fundamental problem,” he added.
The industry expects The Trade Desk to take a big swing
2025 was a wobbly year for The Trade Desk.
A longtime star performer of the independent adtech sector, the demand-side platform’s stock cratered amid questions about whether it could fend off intensifying competition from Amazon. Industry insiders also wondered whether The Trade Desk — which has positioned itself as a champion of “the open internet” — was leaning too heavily on the fragile open web.
In a statement, The Trade Desk’s chief marketing officer, Ian Colley, underscored the company’s commitment to the open internet.
“With Kokai, The Trade Desk has developed the industry’s most advanced and performant, AI-driven digital advertising buying platform,” Colley said. “Kokai will help the world’s largest brands and agencies unlock the full advertising power of the open internet, where consumers now spend the bulk of their digital time.”
The Trade Desk made a sweep of hires in recent months, including a new chief financial officer, chief revenue officer, and chief operating officer. Some in the industry think the ground is fertile for The Trade Desk to make some blockbuster moves in 2026.
Chris Karl, chief business development officer of the advisory firm JEGI LEONIS, said The Trade Desk, which has only made two small acquisitions in its history, could change its tune on M&A this year and make a bigger play.
“They could go much deeper into verticals, much deeper into creative tech, I think they go much deeper into proprietary data,” Karl said.
The remedies in the Google adtech trial could bring a fresh wave of competition
Last year, a federal judge ruled that Google holds an illegal monopoly in certain online adtech markets. The judge is expected to announce her decision on remedies this year, possibly as soon as this month.
The Department of Justice, which brought the case, is seeking a breakup. Specifically, it’s looking for the divestiture of Google’s ad exchange, AdX, and possibly parts of its publisher-facing ad server. Google has said such proposals would be an overreach and is arguing for behavioral remedies instead, such as a tweaking of its auction management rules.
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While Google has made the argument that the open web display ad market “is already in rapid decline,” the outcome still matters for the many adtech players that compete with the Big Tech behemoth.
“They are one of a few 800-pound gorillas now. When there are changes within Google, whether they’re internal changes, whether they’re self-manifested, or whatever ruling comes out here, those create seismic ripples in our ecosystem,” said Anthony Katsur, CEO of the IAB Tech Lab industry standards body.
Some companies aren’t hanging around for the remedies. Following the ruling in the DOJ’s case, a string of companies from Business Insider to the adtech company OpenX sued Google over its advertising practices, seeking damages. The cases are ongoing.
