From Buzzword to Backbone: What ALM 2026 Signals for AI and Advertising

Each year, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Annual Leadership Meeting (ALM) offers a snapshot of where digital advertising stands and where it is headed. In 2026, that picture sharpened quickly. AI is no longer an emerging trend. It has become the industry’s operational substrate, shaping how decisions are made, campaigns are executed, and value is measured.

At ALM 2026, AI was not treated as a standalone topic or future experiment. Under the banner “It Starts Here,” it emerged as connective tissue across conversations on measurement, identity, commerce, and privacy. Rather than signaling a mandate for any single stakeholder, discussions reflected a shared reorientation toward common operating principles. The question shifted from whether AI will shape advertising to how decisively organizations are prepared to rebuild their foundations.

In prior years, AI discussions often focused on pilots or novel demonstrations. This year marked a clear shift toward what many described as industrial plumbing. AI is increasingly central to planning, activation, and optimization in 2026. According to the IAB’s 2026 Outlook Study, digital ad spend is projected to grow 9.5%, with growth shaped in part by AI-enabled targeting and automation. It now powers how media is bought, optimized, and valued.

Across sessions, a consistent theme emerged. Organizations that delay embedding AI into foundational workflows risk falling out of step with a market rapidly reorganizing around automation and intelligence. AI is not simply accelerating existing processes. It is redefining how planning decisions are made and how performance is evaluated in real time.

The emphasis on measurement made this shift especially clear. With the launch of Project Eidos, the IAB elevated a challenge the industry has grappled with for years: the erosion of trust in an opaque, AI-driven environment.

As signal loss continues to erode traditional tracking, the risk is not just fragmentation, but reduced transparency across platforms. The IAB’s 2026 State of Data report highlights a sobering reality: most buy-side respondents believe current AI-powered measurement falls short on rigor and trust. When platforms define metrics in isolation, brands are left comparing results that are difficult to audit or reconcile.

Discussions at ALM reflected broad alignment that this is not a failure of intent, but a structural challenge. Shared definitions, interoperability, and consistent frameworks are required to restore confidence. Project Eidos represents a coordinated effort to move beyond today’s patchwork of channel-based metrics toward an interoperable approach built on shared constructs, framed as a multi-year foundation effort to ensure AI delivers confidence alongside automation.

Commerce and retail media were positioned as the most immediate proving grounds for AI, combining rich first-party data with clearer paths to closed-loop measurement. However, the conversation was not solely about efficiency. Two friction points emerged.

The first was publisher sustainability. IAB President David Cohen introduced the AI Accountability for Publishers Act to address concerns surrounding large-scale AI data use and publisher compensation. Discussions reflected ongoing debate across the ecosystem about how value is created and shared in an AI-driven market. The focus was on exploring guardrails that balance innovation with the long-term viability of journalism and creator ecosystems.

The second was the AI ad gap. While 82% of ad executives believe Gen Z and Millennial consumers feel positive about AI-generated ads, only 45% of those consumers report feeling the same, according to recent IAB and Sonata Insights research. This gap highlights a disconnect between advertiser assumptions and audience sentiment. The findings suggest that clearer, more consistent disclosure of AI use, supported by the AI Transparency and Disclosure Framework, can help rebuild trust and improve resonance without undermining long-term brand equity.

A more understated challenge was the human element. While technical foundations are being put in place, many organizations are still building the expertise required to manage increasingly complex, agentic systems. The shift toward AI as infrastructure is driving demand for deeper AI fluency across strategy, creative, measurement, and governance.

Taken together, the conversations at ALM 2026 suggest that AI’s role in advertising has fundamentally shifted. The question is no longer how quickly the industry can adopt new capabilities, but how deliberately it can operationalize them. Measurement standards, disclosure frameworks, publisher protections, and talent development are no longer secondary considerations. They are the scaffolding required to make AI durable at scale. The shift from buzzword to backbone is already underway. What comes next will depend on whether the industry treats AI as a shortcut or as shared infrastructure that must be governed and trusted over time.

_{Matt Caldecutt is a Senior Vice President in the Technology Practice at FleishmanHillard, with extensive experience in advertising technology and digital media. He advises companies across the ad tech ecosystem on media relations, emerging trends, and industry issues, helping translate complex developments into clear, strategic communications.}