IAB US has released the September update to its 2026 Outlook Study, based on interviews with more than 200 US brand and agency decision-makers in late July.
It is a forecast and a statement of intent with buyers describing what they have done in the first half of the year and what they plan to do with the rest of it rather than an audited result. With that caveat in place, there is a lot in it worth unpacking for anyone here watching where global ad budgets are heading.
Buyers are more confident than they were in January
The full-year 2026 forecast has moved from 9.5% growth to 12.3%. Two things explain it. The first half ran hotter than buyers expected with the Winter Olympics and World Cup both delivered record audiences and pulled spend forward. And the economic anxiety that had buyers cautious in January has eased, so they are carrying more confidence into the back half of the year.
Social keeps pulling away, and CTV isn’t far behind
Social media now has the strongest forecast of any channel, up to 16.5% for the year, followed by CTV at 15.6%. Both estimates were raised from January. Buyers give the same explanation for both: this year’s live events pushed even more viewing toward streaming and social, on top of momentum those channels already had. Podcasts, paid search and out-of-home are all still growing but more modestly, while linear TV and traditional media such as radio, print, direct mail are forecast to shrink again this year.
Commerce media is the other channel getting a bigger vote of confidence, forecast to grow around 10 points faster than the market overall. Buyers put that down to AI shortening the distance between someone finding a product and buying it, plus new partnerships pushing commerce inventory into streaming, ad tech and social feeds.
Creator and influencer partnerships remain the single biggest increased focus
Of everywhere buyers plan to put more effort in 2026, creator and influencer partnerships still rank first, even though enthusiasm has eased slightly since January (54%, down from 57%). It is one of the few areas of the survey where buyers are doubling down on something that was already working, rather than responding to this year’s pressures.
Cohort targeting is the fastest-growing priority as identity signals erode
What has moved a lot more is demo and cohort-based targeting, which jumped from 35% of buyers prioritising it to 53%, the largest shift anywhere in the survey. Buyers link that directly to identity signals continuing to erode and their base of individually addressable people shrinking, so they are building audiences around shared traits instead. Publisher first-party data remains a high priority too, and contextual advertising showed up as a major focus for the first time this year.
Acquisition overtakes retention, with brand building rising alongside it
For much of the past year, US buyers had been leaning toward keeping the customers they already had. That has reversed. Customer acquisition jumped 9 points to become the top media investment goal (63% of buyers), brand equity gained 6 points, and spend aimed at repeat purchase held flat after nearly doubling over the previous two years. Buyers are direct about why: consumer sentiment in the US is at record lows and inflation is still elevated, so shoppers are pickier about who they buy from, and buyers have decided winning new customers is a better use of budget right now than defending the ones they have.
AI has moved from a tool to a problem buyers have to solve for
This is the theme that shows up almost everywhere else in the report. Adjusting to AI-driven search, and dealing with the low-quality AI content that has turned up alongside it, are now the two biggest challenges buyers report ahead of the economy. Understanding agentic AI ad buying is also high on the list, though concern there has eased since January, a sign buyers are past the initial shock and further into figuring out how to work with it.
The clearest evidence of the shift is what buyers are doing about measurement. Most (86%) are already changing, or about to change, how they track performance to account for AI tools and agents. The most common moves are:
- Measuring brand visibility and citations directly inside AI tools
- Treating branded search and direct traffic as a stand-in for AI-driven discovery
- Bringing in third-party tools built specifically to analyse AI discovery
Buyers’ own priorities have shifted with it: using generative AI in campaigns actually declined as a focus this year, while understanding how to appear in AI-generated answers, and how specific AI models work, both rose. The gap they have not closed is comparing an AI-driven customer journey against a traditional one with any real confidence.
One data point from our own FY26 numbers lines up with this almost exactly. Connected TV now takes 60% of Australian publishers’ video ad spend, up from 51% the year before, as desktop’s share keeps shrinking. A different market, at roughly the same pace.
What this means going into 2027
Two things are driving almost everything in this update: buyers want new customers, and they are increasingly trying to reach them by showing up inside AI-generated answers. Creator, social, CTV and cohort targeting are how buyers are finding those new customers. The measurement rebuild is how they are trying to prove any of it worked once AI sits in the middle of the customer journey. For media sellers, that is the brief for the next year to help buyers win new customers, and help them get found inside AI.
The full IAB US 2026 Outlook Study: September Update is available via IAB.com.
Our own FY26 and June quarter Internet Advertising Revenue Report, compiled by PwC Australia, is available to member organisations via the IAB Australia resource library.