2 ©2026 MediaoceanIntroduction ....................................................3 Foreword ..........................................................4 Insight 1 Digital maturity signals the arrival of the “core pillar” era .....................6 Insight 2 Performance as the anchor, testing as the lever ........................................8 Insight 3 The pragmatic shift from hype to hands-on AI implementation ................9 Insight 4 Navigating the gap between evaluation and autonomous production for AI agents .............................11 Insight 5 Bridging the CTV performance gap through unified visibility .....................13 Insight 6 Modernizing transactions for strategic scale ..........................................14 Insight 7 Transparency and actionability define the new standard for ad verification .................................................15 Conclusion & Methodology .......................16 About Mediaocean .......................................17 3 ©2026 MediaoceanIntroductionThank you for reading Mediaocean’s 2026 H2 Market Report. These insights reflect input from 312 marketing professionals, focused on key consumer, technology, and media investment trends for the second half of 2026. We primarily surveyed marketers and agencies, but also included perspectives from media companies, measurement firms, tech platforms, and other industry cohorts. This is the tenth in our series of bi-annual market reports, reflecting more than 6,400 total respondents, with the first published at the end of 2021. The most recent data points used in this research are based on surveys conducted in May 2026. 3 ©2026 Mediaocean4 ©2026 MediaoceanSome call it “test and learn.” Others call it “throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.” Whatever you call it, marketers have been doing it for as long as there has been marketing. And the evolution of digital marketing over the last several decades has provided an ever-shifting set of technologies, regulations, and user behavior that has only made these efforts more important. For the sake of the Mediaocean 2026 H2 Market Report, we will settle on calling it maturation and nowhere is that maturation clearer than in the current stage of artificial intelligence’s rapid rise in digital marketing. Where the last installment of this report saw great gains in forward-looking enthusiasm around AI, this time around marketers are turning that momentum into finding the best applications of these AI capabilities rather than AI just for its own sake. Make no mistake, this still translates into increasing investment, with AI netting the top score among respondents when it comes to areas expected to boost spending in the near term. In fact, the share of marketers increasing spend was more than double that of those maintaining current levels. CTV, digital display/video, and social platforms were also areas where the p...
