The 6 AI Trends That Will Dominate 2026

This past year saw marketers focus on how to influence or amplify their presence in AI-powered search. The next year will see AI even more integrated across their workflows. Advertising and tech executives spoke with ADWEEK about the trends they're seeing in AI, and shared predictions about the industry in 2026. Among their conclusions: Chatbots are starting to chip away at social platforms’ grip on discovery; media buying is inching toward agents negotiating with each other instead of humans; and brands are quietly rebuilding their entire digital presence for AI, ditching websites in favor of app-like experiences that live directly inside ChatGPT and Gemini. The hype isn’t exactly fading, but the next wave of AI will redefine where people seek information, how budgets move, and which platforms actually matter. Here are key AI trends to watch out for in 2026. 1. Chatbots will erode social’s role in discovery If 2025 was the year that AI ate search, 2026 will be the year that AI eats social media, marketing leaders told ADWEEK. Platforms like Meta-owned Instagram have already begun rolling out new AI-powered search and recommendation tools, as well as generative images and Vibes, an AI feed that competes with OpenAI’s Sora 2. Other platforms, like Reddit are incentivizing advertisers to increase their presence and spend on the platform to influence AI search, as ADWEEK previously reported. “Think about what social media actually does,” said Mike Barrett, founder and chief strategy officer at Supernatural AI. “You scroll, see what friends recommend, ask for opinions, get exposed to things you weren’t actively looking for. You crowdsource decisions: Where should I eat? What should I watch? How do I handle this situation with my boss?” AI tools and large language models are increasingly answering those questions, and doing so on the social platforms people already spend time with, Barrett said, adding that the types of questions people generally posted to their friends and social channels are now being sent to chatbots. “In 2026, I expect we’ll start seeing the metrics that confirm this shift,” Barrett said. “The platforms tracking ‘share of conversation’ as a metric will be the canary in the coal mine.” The implication is less about optimizing for search-like queries and more about learning how to show up inside AI-driven conversations—before they become as crowded and formulaic as social feeds are today. “Brands that figure out how to show up authentically in these AI conversations will have a real advantage. The ones waiting for it to look like search are going to be caught flat-footed,” Barrett said 2. The rise of agent-to-agent trading In 2026, media buying is set to shake off its old habits. Direct-sold deals and rigid programmatic pipelines are starting to give way to AI agents that can handle the whole workflow—from understanding what a brand wants, to crafting the logic, to actually executing the deal. This shift is already underway. A wave of AI startups in 2025 took over the tedious grunt work of ad operations, ADWEEK previously reported. Traditional programmatic still runs on specs—a strict blueprint that tells systems exactly how to talk to each other. Agent-to-agent trading flips that on its head. Natural-language AI agents can negotiate media buys end-to-end, while humans step in only when necessary. Even Meta is exploring the concept, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg flagging plans to integrate it into the company’s ad tech stack. “Rather than simply automating existing processes, these agents enable new types of deals and ad formats that don’t fit into legacy pipelines, and provide scale that humans cannot match,” said Joseph Hirsch, chief executive officer at Swivel. Hirsch added that early agentic trading could capture at least 2% of inventory, even among massive media companies like Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount, which still sell 60% to 80% of their inventory directly. 3. Brands move beyond AEO and SEO If 2025 had brands scrambling to crack AEO—Answer Engine Optimization, SEO’s AI-era evolution—2026 will see them reclaiming control. Instead of relying on websites, brands are building experiences that exist natively inside AI platforms, according to Katie Kelly, EVP of commerce experience at Horizon Media. She calls these “agentic experiences,” designed to drive conversions, data exchange, and consumer utility. Marketers are now creating AI-native touchpoints that influence research, discovery, and decision-making, Kelly said. With App SDKs, brands can embed fully interactive experiences inside AI interfaces, letting consumers plan, book, shop, or stream directly in a chat. That’s increasingly important as major chatbots like ChatGPT and Perplexity, along with retailers including Amazon, Walmart, and Lowe’s, roll out their own AI shopping assistants, ADWEEK previously reported. Kelly said brands have multiple ways to execute: Model Context Protocol (MCP) pushes product info, FAQs, and reviews into the AI environment, while Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) enables transactional experiences, surfacing products and letting consumers buy without ever visiting a website. 4. New publisher deals with usage-based models Aside from OpenAI and Perplexity, mega tech giants like Google and Microsoft have started working directly with publishers to license content for their AI chatbots. Few details about these deals are public, though a leaked deck obtained by ADWEEK showed that publishers receive a guaranteed licensing payment for letting OpenAI access their content backlog, plus a bonus payment based on how many people click or engage with that content in the AI chat.. These components are typically combined into a single annual payment. In 2026, LLM deals are expected to shift from one-time training payments to revenue shares tied to actual usage, similar to how YouTube and Spotify compensate creators based on consumption. Ben Young, CEO of Nudge, said the shift is driven by demand for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) queries, which overlay fresh, authoritative content on AI outputs. “[This is] changing static training into a continuous demand for the latest content,” he said, adding that there's a need for models to access high-quality material in real time. Microsoft has already begun moving in this direction with its pay-per-usage marketplace, joined by partners including People Inc. Usage-based agreements, Young added, align incentives by paying publishers for their most valuable content. The approach turns content from a cost center into a revenue opportunity, while ensuring LLMs can provide users with accurate and timely information. 5. Answer engines held accountable It’s not a new trend that people are changing how they search for information online. More people are turning to AI chatbots directly instead of typing queries into Google. In a recent survey from AEO agency On Marketing, 86% of respondents said they had replaced a Google search with a chatbot query at least once in the past 30 days, even if most still use search overall. That shift is pushing us toward “answer engines,” where a single, authoritative AI response replaces the familiar list of links. That shift sets the stage for a world where people receive and trust one answer instead of combing through a list of links. This raises a new set of questions about truth and responsibility, especially since these bots are known to hallucinate and spread misinformation. “As search evolves into ‘answer engines,’ users increasingly receive single, authoritative answers rather than links to multiple sources,” said Jason Snyder, cofounder of Artists & Robots. “That creates a crisis of algorithmic truth. If your AI defines what is true for billions of people, what are your obligations?” Snyder says the implications go beyond technology and privacy, pushing regulators to reconsider the obligations platforms have when AI becomes the primary source of information and context for users. 6. Google Gemini challenges ChatGPT for daily users Google’s Gemini is beginning to narrow the gap with ChatGPT, as recent product upgrades drive faster user growth and give Google a clearer path to monetization. Google's Gemini saw global monthly active users increase roughly 30% between August and November, when the company released Gemini 3, ADWEEK previously reported. Over the same period, ChatGPT’s user base grew about 6%. The tech giant has also begun briefing advertisers on ads in Gemini, marking its first step toward turning chatbot usage into a scalable revenue stream, ADWEEK previously reported. Google has already been piloting ads in its AI overviews and AI Mode in search. Still, ChatGPT remains the larger service overall, with OpenAI reporting roughly 800 million weekly users, compared with 650 million monthly users for Google's Gemini. Industry executives say the competition is shifting from features to infrastructure. While OpenAI has led consumer adoption, Google enters the next phase of the chatbot race with an advantage built over decades: an advertising system already embedded across its products. OpenAI has not yet introduced advertising, but signs of monetization are emerging. References to potential ad integrations have appeared in the ChatGPT Android app, and the company has hired several former advertising executives, as ADWEEK previously reported. “Google Gemini will even the field with ChatGPT in 2026,” said Michael Robbins, associate director of paid search at Exverus. “ChatGPT struggles to keep pace on quality and profitability because it doesn’t have the advertising infrastructure Google does.”

Artificial Intelligence

The 6 AI Trends That Will Dominate 2026

From agent-to-agent media buying to the erosion of social discovery, here’s what the industry says will actually matter next year

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Trishla Ostwal

Media

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