by Sara Vincent, Managing Director UK, Utiq
I’m usually the eternal optimist, but it’s hard to ignore that the mood across digital advertising right now feels… turbulent.
There’s a collective sense of relief that 2025 is done and dusted. Books closed, targets hit or missed, we move on. But that relief is quickly followed by a more uncomfortable question: what, exactly, has changed that will make 2026 meaningfully different?
One adtech professional I spoke to said “hope” which I thought was nice but for many, the honest answer is: “not enough” and that’s where the unease creeps in.
The Storm…
Uncertainty, once a temporary state, has become the operating model. Long-range forecasts are being quietly replaced by scenario planning. “If X happens, we do Y. If Z happens, we retrench.” It’s pragmatic, but it’s also exhausting, planning without conviction takes its toll.
At the same time, publishers are being dragged towards a reckoning that feels both inevitable and chaotic. AI overviews and answer engines are accelerating the erosion of referral traffic, particularly for independent publishers who built their businesses on search visibility. For many, it feels less like strategic change and more like being stuck in a tornado—aware that something fundamental is shifting, but unable to grab hold of anything solid long enough to steer.
Add to that a deluge of predictions about what 2026 will bring for digital advertising varying from growth, decline, reinvention, consolidation… the list goes on. Each forecast conveniently aligns with the forecaster’s business model but that’s understandable—we’re all trying to keep the lights on—but it does little to provide genuine clarity.
And then there’s AI. Every conference, every panel, every deck. The consensus takeaway from both global tent-pole events and smaller local gatherings seems to be that AI will dominate the conversation for the next three years—long before most models are trained, governed and deployed well enough to deliver consistent commercial value. For now, it’s as much distraction as it is solution.
(Also, completely unrelated, but can it please stop raining?)
The calm (er) waters
Despite all of that, this doesn’t feel like an industry in decline. It feels like one in the uncomfortable middle phase of a reset.
A new year still brings permission to change. We’re well past the point of talking about protecting revenue, diversifying income streams, and mitigating platform risk. The shift now is toward action, the goal isn’t perfection just progress.
What’s encouraging is that out-of-the-box thinking is no longer being politely entertained and quietly ignored. It’s being actively welcomed, when the old playbooks stop working, experimentation becomes less of a risk and more of a necessity.
Nowhere is this more visible than among some publishers who, until recently, lacked the luxury of diversification or the balance sheet to absorb short-term losses for long-term gain. Forced into a corner by traffic declines and margin pressure, they’re innovating faster than ever not because it’s trendy,but because survival demands it. Necessity, as ever, is proving to be the mother of invention.
Across different areas of the industry, common themes are emerging. Efficiency of scale is no longer a dirty phrase. Resource reviews are becoming sharper and more honest: where do we pare back, and where do we double down? What does the future workforce look like when automation handles some tasks but creates demand for others?
Perhaps most interestingly, there’s a growing willingness to look sideways at competitors. At companies wrestling with the same structural problems, collaboration is starting to feel like a rational response rather than a last resort.
I hope 2026 becomes the year the industry stopped waiting for certainty and started building for resilience instead.
Not everything will work and some bets will fail. But standing still is no longer an option and that, paradoxically, might be exactly what the industry needs to rediscover its momentum.
