The year 2025 might have been a roller-coaster ride for the media and advertising business, but 2026 presents an opportunity to bring back some magic into the creative product and merge technology with human empathy. Leaders from the advertising world present their wish list and spell out the way forward for the industry.
Technology will find its true place
By Amit Wadhwa, CEO, South Asia, Dentsu Creative & Media Brands
Every industry has its moments of pause, brief and rare windows where the pace of change eases just enough for us to see the road ahead with sharper clarity. For media and advertising, 2026 feels like one of those moments. The past few years were about acceleration: new technologies, new structures, new expectations. But 2026 will be about absorption, letting all that momentum settle into meaning, shaping who we are, how we work, and what we choose to value.
2025 brought a global reshuffling. Mergers redefined networks, structures evolved, and AI shifted from conversation to daily practice. But 2026 is when these shifts stop feeling experimental and start becoming part of our operating system. This transition also brings a reminder.
Not long ago, a young planner told me the hardest part of her job was not finding insights, it was finding the time to think. That conversation reminds me that if we want better work, we must create environments where thinking is not a luxury but a priority.
In 2026, we must decide what we want AI to stand for. Is it a shortcut to output or a partner in elevating insight, imagination and empathy?
And with consolidation reshaping the landscape, we must ask whether scale fuels creativity or risks diluting the diversity that makes it powerful. These are not questions of fear but of maturity, of choosing the kind of industry we want to build.
Return to purposeful creativity
Even as technology races ahead, the heart of what we do remains rooted in something deeply human. Algorithms can optimise, but they cannot replicate emotional truth, cultural nuance or the magic of an idea that feels unmistakably alive. Consumers today are seeking that depth again.
They want brands that stand for something, that reflect intelligence, conscience and relevance to the world around them. In a hyper-automated ecosystem, belief, not just visibility, will become the real differentiator. In today’s rush for relevance, we often forget that creativity still needs room, not just intelligence. 2026 will be a good moment to bring that discipline back.
The urgency of balance
Our strength has always come from our people – curious, restless, inventive. As automation grows, leadership in this year must protect and amplify that human spark. Equally, we must rebuild trust in measurement, in media integrity and in the responsibility that comes with shaping narratives at scale.
If 2025 rewrote the industry, 2026 will redefine it, not by size but by substance. Asia, and India in particular, will play a decisive role in shaping this next chapter. The future belongs to those who merge technology with what is deeply human, because that is where the next wave of creativity will be born.
Creative energy will be back in focus
By Gautam Reghunath, co-founder & CEO, Talented
The advertising industry has spent a big part of last year obsessed with mergers and engrossed in the distraction of new threats. Along the way, the stories around the agency business have gone from being written by the work we make, to being hijacked by industry eulogies and a near-constant death-knell about AI.
My hope for 2026 is that we all manage to simply get back to the work.
As familiar agency brands and structures collapse into each other, the irony is that the opportunity ahead suddenly feels more accessible to far more players. Alongside all the consolidation headlines, individuals, small teams, and independent studios have quietly been given a fillip. More permission than ever to matter. More trust, even. The future of this industry feels like it will be written by people with the courage to show up with a point of view, not by organisations that continue to confuse size with significance.
Fragmentation tends to be frequently framed as chaos. I, for one, think it can be a good thing for our industry. An industry dotted with smaller, focused creative businesses that actually care deeply about the work looks far healthier than one commandeered by a handful of multinational giants. The Davids move faster because they believe in fewer things. There is clarity in being their size. They attract talent because conviction is magnetic. In 2026, I hope more people choose to build places that stand for something, even if staying small is very much the point.
What I most want to see return is creative ambition. Somewhere along the way, cynicism became fashionable and creativity itself lost weight, dismissed by too many clients as an indulgence rather than a driver of growth. That thinking is flawed. Creativity remains one of the most powerful commercial tools ever invented, and we would do well to start treating it like one again.
In 2026, I hope we give imagination the authority it deserves again. This requires leaders to remove cynicism from the room. Cynicism kills ambition long before budgets do. If people do not believe their work can matter, it never will. Hope is a prerequisite in creative industries.
The most urgent challenge ahead is building sustainable organisations that protect creative energy. Not bloated systems that need to merge their way out of problems created by years of structural complacency. Sustainable agencies grow people deliberately, plan manpower responsibly, and treat creative energy as a finite resource.
So, my wish list for 2026 is simple. May we all be able to just get back to the work.
Integrity will no longer be optional
By Priti Murthy, president, client solutions, WPP Media South Asia
As I look to the year ahead, my reflections are rooted in nearly three decades navigating the industry’s ever-shifting landscape. Through various transitions, I’ve come to learn, often from challenging experiences that change isn’t just constant, it can be an ally. I share a perspective and a wish list shaped by experience on our foreseeable future and how we might best approach it.
- AI is here to stay: Be smart in learning, adopting and using it.
Use it for learning. Skills and areas of AI that bring in value (not nuisance) and serve in building your personal skills. Be selfish in learning.
Test, learn and create your ecosystem that blends in AI naturally, just like our parents took to WhatsApp and revealed our lives to the world.
Use AI every single day. This is not optional but mandatory. Upgrade existing systems, processes and thinking of talent.
- Brand love and storytelling: We are in a world of instant gratification, and we expect immediate results every second, minute, and hour. What if the attention weans away? Where do we seamlessly integrate brands into consumers’ ways of living? I have seen the over obsession of data and under representation of brand love in the last decade. We need to draw focus here. It’s essential to bring the consumer journey and life of brands into play and blend them with short-term magic.
- People Matter: Even more in the real world now that the way we work and engage is more virtual. A big shift noticed post pandemic is the lack of personalisation of people. They are our biggest assets and investing in them is the most critical value we can add to organisations and to individuals. They are our future leaders, let’s empower them with more EQ and IQ driven qualities.
- Trust and transparency: In the reality of being burnt out and feeling stretched, we should find the joy that will enable us to connect the dots of AI, measurement, content, commerce, partnerships and bring in transparency. Integrity is no longer optional.
Craft will scale platforms
By Varun Shah, managing partner, Publicis Production
As we look ahead to 2026, my wish for the media and advertising industry is simple at its core: that we rediscover clarity of purpose, of process, and of people at a time when everything feels amplified by speed, scale and technology.
The biggest change I hope to see is a truly integrated way of working across creative, media, and production. For too long, production has been treated as the final mile rather than a strategic partner at the starting line. In a world defined by always-on content, performance-led creativity, and AI-enabled workflows, the traditional separation between idea, execution, and distribution no longer serves brands.
When production is embedded early, it doesn’t dilute creativity—it protects it. It enables ideas to scale with consistency, craft and efficiency across markets and platforms. We have seen this firsthand through long-term partnerships with brands such as Airtel, Spotify, Mondelez, and Garnier, where early integration has helped balance ambition with feasibility and speed with quality.
Another shift I hope for is a move away from volume-driven thinking towards intelligent content that provides value driven output. As an industry, we have mastered scale, but not always sustainability. Producing more content faster is no longer the differentiator; producing the right content, intelligently adapted, responsibly made, and measurably effective is. This requires smarter production models and AI as an enabler, not a shortcut – something we’re seeing through our agentic AI platform, Marcel Make, where AI connects data, production knowledge, and performance to support better human decisions.
I would also welcome a return to deeper collaboration and greater patience in the creative process. Somewhere along the way, timelines shrank but expectations grew. Yet, great work still needs space to be challenged, refined and elevated. Craft thrives when there is trust between clients, agencies, and production teams, and when success isn’t judged only by immediacy, but by impact and longevity.
There are also urgent issues leaders must address. Talent is one. As technology reshapes roles, we need to focus on reskilling rather than replacing—building future-ready teams that combine creative intuition with technical fluency. Accountability is the other – transparency in costs, responsible use of AI, and production ecosystems that are ethical, inclusive, and environmentally conscious.
Finally, my wish for 2026 is that we remember that ours is still a people business. Technology will continue to evolve, platforms will change, and models will be disrupted. But progress will only be meaningful if it brings people together. If we can balance innovation with humanity, and efficiency with excellence, the industry won’t just keep up with change but will lead it.