GUEST COLUMN: AI at the core of marketing as 2025 resets the baseline and 2026 rewrites the playbook

MUMBAI: If 2025 made artificial intelligence indispensable to marketing, 2026 will make it decisive. In this authored perspective, Nikhil Kumar, chief growth officerat mediasmart, argues that the industry is entering a new phase defined not by isolated optimisation but by AI-led orchestration across screens, formats and moments. Drawing on nearly two decades of experience spanning FMCG, retail and ad-tech, Kumar outlines how intelligence-led systems will replace channel-led planning and reshape how brands deliver relevance, trust and growth at scale.

2025: The year AI became a marketing baseline  
2025 marks a clear inflection point in the marketing ecosystem. Artificial intelligence has moved decisively from experimentation to expectation. What was once treated as a “nice-to-have” capability is now a non-negotiable foundation across marketing, creative, and data functions. 

According to industry research, 76–88% of marketing teams were using AI in core marketing operations by 2025, up sharply from the early experimental phase just a few years earlier.

In parallel, nearly nine in ten digital marketers reported using AI daily as part of their workflows, highlighting how integral it had become to execution.

AI fluency today is no longer a differentiator – it is a baseline skill. Brands and agencies increasingly expect teams to not just execute campaigns, but to use AI to extract sharper insights, enhance creative effectiveness, and optimize media performance across screens. This shift signals a larger truth: AI is no longer an add-on to marketing; it is embedded into how marketing operates. 

How AI shaped marketing execution in 2025  
In 2025, AI moved from being a promising experiment to becoming the engine driving modern advertising. Across screens, marketers no longer rely on static strategies or post-campaign reports to gauge success, AI now guides decisions in real time, transforming how campaigns are planned, executed, and measured.  

• AI in programmatic  
AI enabled marketers to reach the right audience at the right time across screens, fundamentally changing how campaigns were executed. In CTV and programmatic campaigns, AI dynamically optimized placements, frequency, and sequencing, ensuring that impressions contributed to real business outcomes rather than simply delivering reach. By the end of 2025, 83% of senior brand marketers were using AI for targeting, leveraging real-time behavioral and predictive signals to make campaigns more precise and effective. Personalization also scaled across channels, with 93% of marketers using AI for content creation to deliver highly relevant emails, social posts, and landing experiences, ensuring that messaging resonated at every touchpoint. 

• AI in real-time optimization and predictive insights  
AI transformed campaign management from reactive to proactive. Programmatic ad spend managed by AI accounted for nearly 90% of digital display budgets, allowing campaigns to continuously adjust in real time. Predictive models further enhanced decision-making, improving forecasting accuracy by up to 47% and enabling marketers to anticipate user intent, optimize campaigns on the fly, and allocate budgets more efficiently. This combination of automation and predictive intelligence made marketing faster, smarter, and more accountable. 

At mediasmart, we see this transformation every day. AI-powered systems continuously optimize placements, manage frequency, and ensure that campaigns deliver real business impact rather than just media impressions.  

From predicting audience behavior to fine-tuning campaigns on the fly, AI has redefined what effective marketing looks like in 2025.  

What success looked like in 2025  
In 2025, success was measured differently. Traditional metrics like reach and impressions were no longer sufficient. Marketers evaluated campaigns based on:  
• Actionable insights: how AI informed strategy and creative decisions.  
• Audience engagement: relevance and personalization at scale.  
• Return on investment: tangible impact of AI-driven campaigns. 

The industry split into two groups: routine, manual execution became increasingly automated, while the real value shifted to teams who could interpret AI signals and guide creative and strategic decisions. The most resilient marketers were not simply those who used AI—they were those who steered it effectively.

2026: From optimization to orchestration

How AI’s role expands next  

If 2025 is about AI-driven optimization, 2026 will be about AI-led orchestration.  

The next phase of marketing will move beyond improving individual campaigns to designing connected, adaptive experiences across screens. AI will no longer react to performance signals alone – it will proactively anticipate intent and shape consumer journeys in real time. 

Marketing will shift from channel-led planning to intelligence-led orchestration, with AI acting as the connective tissue across devices, formats, and moments. 

Creativity evolves with AI: From static to adaptive  
In 2026, creative intelligence will take center stage. AI-led Dynamic Creative Optimization will enable creatives to evolve in real time, adapting messaging, sequencing, and formats based on context, screen, and behavior. 

Creative will no longer be a fixed output launched and measured later. Instead, it will function as a living system – learning continuously and improving with every interaction.  

AI from reach to meaningful attention  
As AI enables scale with precision, the industry’s focus will shift from reach to attention. Campaigns will focus on high-attention users, not just impressions.  

Ensuring that ads are actually seen and not simply served—will become a defining challenge. At mediasmart, innovations like Maximize User Awareness (MUA), recently granted a U.S. patent (US12354134B2), are designed for this future. MUA identifies high-attention users who have not been overexposed and prioritizes them in real time, ensuring impressions are both meaningful and valuable.  

This shift ensures that advertising becomes not just seen, but noticed and engaged with, closing the loop between delivery and impact.  

Responsible AI as a differentiator  
As AI scales across targeting, optimization, and creativity, 2026 will demand accountability and trust as non-negotiable.  

Leading brands will combine AI-driven decision-making with strong data governance, privacy-first frameworks, and human oversight—especially in high-impact environments like Connected TV. AI-powered content analysis and fraud detection will play a critical role in ensuring brand safety without compromising performance.  

Solutions such as mediasmart’s CTV AI Safe illustrate how trust, compliance, and effectiveness can coexist – turning responsible AI into a competitive advantage rather than a constraint.  

Looking ahead – being decisive  
2025 made AI essential. 2026 makes it decisive.  
Brands that build AI literacy today and prepare for cross-screen orchestration tomorrow will shape the next era of marketing. Intelligence will drive:  

• Relevance: delivering the right message at the right moment to the right user.  
• Trust: balancing performance with privacy, safety, and accountability.  
• Growth: using AI to create smarter, sustainable marketing systems.  

The decisive edge will go to marketers who not only use AI but guide it strategically, transforming insights, creative, and media into a connected, high-performing system.