As the digital advertising industry enters a new phase of maturity, so does its relationship with data. Going into 2026, marketers’ long-standing obsession with scale is giving way to something more grounded: a push for smarter, actionable, owned data.
Scale still matters. But it isn’t sufficient on its own anymore, nor do we achieve in the same ways we once did.
Over the past 18 months, AI has taken hold as the engine underpinning modern enterprises, giving new meaning (and gravity) to the concept of being data-driven. Let’s look at the key forces redefining marketers’ relationship with data and what they’ll mean for the ad industry in the year ahead.
AI as a catalyst for smarter data
The AI hype has collided with reality in a big way. Machine learning has been part of marketing technology for years. For a while, the “AI craze” was mostly about rebranding and promoting those existing solutions.
But now a new class of tools has emerged and matured in a way that can automate decision-making effectively for areas it couldn’t previously, such as recommending audiences and targeting strategies, optimizing campaign delivery and creative and predicting performance.
Newfound capabilities have also exposed a weakness. Models trained on cheap or unverified data underperform, while systems fueled by transparent, well-documented inputs consistently outperform. As AI moves to the operational core of enterprises, data quality becomes a measurable performance lever rather than a back-office hygiene exercise.
The shift from renting to owning data
The pressure to capitalize on AI or get left behind has upended how brands and agencies think about data acquisition. Until recently, most marketers accessed third-party data indirectly by buying segments through major platforms and paying for temporary use. With AI, and emerging agentic capabilities in particular, that model is rapidly losing its appeal.
Today, brands want to license and control the data that fuels their analytics and AI engines. Agencies, meanwhile, are building proprietary data stacks designed to serve multiple clients, using their enterprise buying scale to empower their clients’ data sets. All parties want flexibility and the ability to test, combine and deploy data across environments without being locked into a single platform’s limitations.
AdExchanger Daily
Get our editors’ roundup delivered to your inbox every weekday.
Daily Roundup
Agencies are becoming data platforms
Closely tied to a deepened focus on data ownership is a structural transformation within agencies themselves. The largest holding companies continue to invest heavily in building their own data tech stacks to manage identity, enrichment and analytics efforts for clients.
The role of the agency has expanded. Agencies have become intermediaries, responsible not just for creative and media but also for the intelligence that builds and connects audience data to activation. Their value proposition has expanded beyond creative and media execution into data science and audience creation.
Identifier fatigue and the rise of practical interoperability
2026 will be defined by pragmatism.
Marketers know cookies aren’t disappearing overnight, but they also understand their utility will continue to wane. The quest for replacements feels less urgent, but a thoughtful multi-ID approach is an understood and manageable part of operating in the digital ad ecosystem.
The focus now is on building interoperable frameworks that link multiple identifiers – such as mobile ad IDs, alternative IDs, first-party data and, especially, connected TV IDs – which have grown increasingly influential as streaming captures a larger share of digital ad spend.
The goal isn’t one ID to rule them all; it’s the ability to work across IDs efficiently and responsibly. That means investing in partnerships and environments that prioritize portability and consent.
A leaner, more technical marketing workforce
In discussing marketers’ evolving relationship with data, we’d be remiss not to acknowledge the cultural and structural changes that brand and agency teams are undergoing. Automation, agentic AI tools and a hyper focus on outcomes have forced organizations to be nimble while providing transparent, data-based justification of their decision-making processes.
Success now depends on marketing professionals who can bridge data literacy, technical fluency and human judgment. Sales and partnership roles that once relied on charm are giving way to solution-oriented, technically informed expertise.
More people across every team, from media planning to creative strategy, are asking sharper questions about data: where it comes from, how it’s modeled, what it truly represents and, most importantly, what it can do.
The return of provenance and trust
Data transparency is pushing its way to the center stage. Marketers are demanding to know how data is sourced, how it’s validated and whether it’s grounded in real-world signals rather than anonymous digital exhaust. Data providers that can clearly document their inputs and processes will rise in influence; those that can’t will fade into the background noise of the open web.
Marketers have entered an era where the integrity of their data defines the integrity of their decisions. The next phase of digital advertising won’t be defined by who collects the most data. The future will be defined by who understands data best.
