Overheard in the Media Agency Report: How Assembly, IPG, Horizon and others use AI and will spend on ads in 2026
By Catherine Wolf and Li Lu • November 28, 2025 •
Ivy Liu
This research is based on unique data collected from our proprietary audience of publisher, agency, brand and tech insiders. It’s available to Digiday+ members. More from the series →
This is a bonus behind-the-scenes look at our conversations with executives for Digiday’s 2025 Media Agency Report, which examined the current and future state of media agencies, from the perspective of total client spending and spending by media channel, and delved into the impact of agentic AI on the agency landscape.
Digiday hosted a focus group of seven senior media agency executives who oversee media investment at holding company-owned and independent media agencies to gather first-person accounts of client spending. Agencies and networks that participated in the focus group were:
- Assembly Global
- Horizon Next
- IPG Mediabrands
- Mediahub
- Mile Marker
- Novus
- PMG
What follows are their thoughts on how they and their clients are incorporating AI into daily workflows and their expectations for client spending in 2026.
How GDP and international sports could impact 2026 spend
Drew Corry, svp of strategic investment and marketplace strategy at IPG Mediabrands: “[Ad spending] should be up, but it’s going to be artificially driven by things like the World Cup and the Olympics. Those have a tendency to push investment up. The best we can tell, it looks like it would be moderate growth if you took that out. There is still a lot of uncertainty and unanswered questions about major countries as it relates to tariffs. We’ve seen some consumers and some companies pull forward spending, but on the back half, whether or not that’s needed, the jury is still out.”
Mike O’Connor, evp and head of investment at Horizon Next: “If the upfront is any indication, the market for 2026 looks slightly stronger than 2025. You’ve got a confluence of the Olympics and the World Cup — all of these things that are driving spend. Broadly speaking, it feels a little rosier, a little sunnier than 2025.”
Andrea Montano, evp of strategy, insights and connections at Assembly Global: “We look at GDP too. I was looking at recent numbers [as of August 2025], and the U.S. is looking at a GDP growth of about 2%. That’s modest. Part of it also depends on your client roster — multiregion clients, or true global clients. We’re a little bit more optimistic [about 2026 spending] because the global GDP is looking a bit stronger. If that continues, I think, in the U.S., we’ll be a little bit more bullish about it. But again, 2% GDP growth is not so fantastic.”
Scott Shamberg, president and CEO at Mile Marker: “In terms of my personal use of [AI], it is allowing me the capacity to do more. But, looking forward, how and where we adopt AI and how we use it to support the humans [at our agency], and align them against higher impact work, we look at it in two ways. There’s the bucket of, how do you become more efficient with repeatable and scalable tasks? And, how do you use AI to advance capabilities? It’s starting to weave its way in, in one of those buckets, in almost every decision that we make for ourselves and for the client.”
Andrea Montano, evp of strategy, insights and connections at Assembly Global: “Every executive client is asking what their AI roadmap should be. It’s pairing your [agency] vision with where they [clients] are as a culture and their commitment to AI, because they might still just be dabbling. We try to line those up because we’re as successful as our clients are when it comes to [AI]. Otherwise, we’re not using it to its full potential. That’s going back to where we find the efficiencies. That’s why everyone’s talking about more outcome-based compensation models as well. It’s not about the head count. It’s about how you make smarter decisions more quickly, to have the outcomes that you want and be compensated accordingly. There will be some shifts with how we have commercial agreements with clients as a result of AI, which could be incredible — beneficial on both sides.”
Rob Davis, president and CMO at Novus: “There are two main questions [from clients]. One is just how and where are you [the agency] using it. How are you going to reduce fees by saving time and energy? How is what you’re doing going to make us smarter than the competition? Then, there’s a very specific question that I don’t think I’ve talked to a client in the last four to six weeks that they haven’t asked, ‘how is it impacting both paid and organic search?’ I talked to a client the other day who said ‘our site traffic is down 30%.’ They’re attributing most of it to AI [agentic AI’s effects on search results]. It’s very category dependent, or client specific, but that specifically is a very hot topic.”
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