New research from Mediaocean’s H1 2026 Advertising Outlook Report shows that while marketers are moving from experimentation to execution with AI, fragmented systems are slowing progress in planning, activation, and measurement.
AI maturity is coming into focus as marketers move from experimentation to execution, with data quality or access issues (42 percent) and difficulty connecting AI insights across systems (41 percent) cited as the biggest barriers to effectively scaling AI.
Based on insights from hundreds of marketers, this biannual report shows how AI is evolving from an experimental feature to a core force shaping modern advertising, while also revealing critical gaps in how systems, data, and workflows are connected.
Gen AI has been ranked as the most important consumer trend for the third consecutive year, mentioned by 70% of marketers, highlighting its growing influence on how people discover content, engage with brands, and make decisions. While enthusiasm for AI remains high, adoption patterns suggest a steeper maturity curve.
While 43% of marketers use AI for data analysis and 43% for market research, adoption declines as AI moves closer to implementation, with just 33% using AI for creative development and 19% for campaign orchestration.
Media Oceans also found that media investment is recovering selectively, with planned spending increases focused on CTV and digital video (63% each), social platforms (61%), and advertising on AI-driven media/AI agents (54%), while traditional channels such as print and linear TV continue to face pressure.
The report also notes that orchestration challenges are growing as media channels proliferate and AI becomes more deeply integrated into marketing workflows. Although 86% of marketers say cross-channel orchestration is important, only 10% report having fully integrated ad tech systems in place, creating friction in scaling AI as well as coordinating planning, activation, measurement, and optimization across an increasingly complex media landscape.
“Marketers know that AI has the potential to deliver better outcomes, but fragmented systems make it difficult to convey insights from planning to activation to optimization.”This report shows that AI adoption can go beyond data analysis and market research. We’re seeing a shift towards execution workflows like creative development and campaign optimization, which is why the cost of disconnected systems is much higher,” said Michael Serratore, vice president of client success APAC at Innovid.
“We built the orchestration agent to fill this gap, and we are focused on continuing to grow the connective tissue that turns siled AI capabilities into unified campaign execution so that insights are not lost across platforms or systems,” Serratore added.
Marketers are moving from channel-level optimization to system-level intelligence, with 39 percent prioritizing AI and 39 percent prioritizing cross-platform orchestration, marking a shift from siled point solutions to more connected and adaptive infrastructure.
“As AI becomes more deeply integrated into the media lifecycle, the benefits will not come from deploying more tools, but from coordinating them,” said Aaron Goldman, chief marketing officer at MediaOcean.
“This research shows marketers are ready to move from experimentation to execution, but fragmented systems are slowing progress. A smarter, more connected foundation is what will turn AI insights into action at scale.”
The Advertising Outlook for H1 2026 is the ninth in Media Ocean’s bi-annual research series, drawing on insights from more than 6,100 total respondents. The latest findings are based on a survey of brands, agencies, media companies and technology providers conducted in November 2025.
