Get Ready for AI Media
2026 is the year AI platforms join the media plan
AI is becoming a media channel faster than anyone expected.
Here’s what’s in this week’s issue:
Get Ready for AI Media
2025 pushed AI from early curiosity to everyday habit for consumers. In 2026, AI platforms will start to compete for budget with search, social media and retail media, becoming media channels in their own right. Read on for my top three predictions.
Consumer Behavior to Watch
New Deloitte research shows a major shift in AI shopping adoption that will reshape how brands show up in 2026.
AI Ad News from the GOMMA
A crisp, curated roundup of what Google, OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon did to move the AI Ad Economy forward.
Question of the Week
What’s your top prediction for the AI Ad Economy in 2026?
Ok, let’s dive in …
Say Hello to AI Media
$300 billion.
That’s how much advertisers will spend on social media this year, per WARC. Retail media will add another $175 billion.
How big will AI media be? In 2026, we will start to find out.
But first, some context.
In 2007, when I was an analyst at eMarketer, I published one of the earliest projections for social network ad spending. I recognized the power and potential of platforms like Facebook well ahead of many others.
Social media was barely a blip on advertisers’ radar back then. Total worldwide ad spending on social networks was expected to reach just $1.2 billion in 2007, according to the forecast I worked on.
But the writing was on the (Facebook) wall. People were starting to spend more time on social networks, drawn by the idea of going online to share what they were up or what they thought, with the validation of likes and comments from friends and connections to inspire them to post again and again. Advertisers realized they needed to be there, where those conversations were happening.
Today, social media is an integral part of advertisers’ budgets and Meta is second only to Google in worldwide digital ad revenues.
Now, AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Rufus and Copilot and are starting down the same path. They are “AI media”:
AI media are ad-supported experiences that will emerge inside AI assistants, AI-enhanced search and AI-native interfaces — and eventually, AI agents — where people ask questions, research and make decisions.
2025 pushed AI from early curiosity to everyday habit, for both consumers and advertisers. That momentum sets the stage for 2026 to be the year real ad solutions start to break through.
Three Major Shifts in AI Media in 2026
I predict the AI landscape will undergo three major shifts next year, each with direct impact on paid advertising strategies.
1) AI Usage Will Grow Faster Than Social Media Usage
I expect ChatGPT will reach 1 billion weekly users worldwide by the end of 2025, three years after its November 2022 launch. As of October 2025, it had already reached 800 million. By comparison, Facebook took more than 8 years to reach 1 billion monthly users — a much lower bar than weekly usage.
In the US, I expect usage of AI platforms to climb at a faster rate than the adoption curve once seen with social networks.
In 2026, I estimate that 45% of U.S. internet users will visit AI platforms monthly, compared to 42% who used social networks monthly in 2007, a similar point in their development, per the eMarketer forecast I worked on back then.
Data from clickstream data provider Datos indicates that AI platform usage has grown quickly. In December 2024, 32% of US desktop internet users visited platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini or Perplexity, rising 6 percentage points to 38% in June 2025. Ipsos found that the percentage of US adults using generative AI products or services “sometimes” or “often” rose from 44% in March 2025 to 56% in November 2025.
Taken together, this behavioral data combined with self-reported usage data — as well as other data I’ve been tracking — gives me confidence in projecting that 2026 monthly AI usage in the US will climb to 45% of internet users.
2) AI Platforms Will Be the Next Important Paid Advertising Destinations
ChatGPT may have delayed its ad product temporarily in order to address the challenges from Google’s latest Gemini model, but I am confident it will begin displaying ads in 2026.
When I ran an informal poll on LinkedIn recently, nearly 9 in 10 respondents (mostly a marketing/advertising group) said they agreed.
As commenter Rick Bruner put it, “They have to turn a profit somehow, or the whole economy is going to implode.”
In the meantime, don’t sleep on other platforms. Google is already showing ads in AI Overviews, while ads also appear in Microsoft’s Copilot. Are these ads the most exciting ads in the world? No. Take a look at this Copilot ad I spotted the other day.
Social media advertising didn’t start out very exciting either. The first ads on Facebook were “flyers” and text-and-image ads on the right side of the screen. But that changed over time.
I expect a wave of new — and much more exciting — ad formats to launch on AI platforms. We may even see a return of advertising to Perplexity, which paused its ads expansion in the fall.
Here’s what I think will happen in 2026:
AI platforms will start offering paid placement within conversations where clear purchase intent signals are evident.
The ads will be clearly labeled as sponsored, and they will likely tie into direct purchase opportunities.
Eventually, ads will also appear embedded in other types of interactions, such as inspiration (where should I take my family on spring break?) and research (what are the best resorts near Disney World?), effectively turning AI chats into a new media channel.
3) AI Platforms Will Become a Primary Discovery Channel
Platforms like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews are already reshaping consumer discovery, and the impact will rapidly increase in 2026, as more consumers gravitate to AI platforms to do research and get product recommendations. A September 2025 Adobe survey show that:
“Over one-third report having used an AI-powered service for online shopping, with top use cases including research (per 53% of respondents), product recommendations (40%), finding deals (36%), and gift inspiration (30%).”
Brands will need to optimize across five fronts—content marketing, websites, listings platforms, social channels and community/review sites—to ensure they are visible when consumers search on AI platforms.
That may seem like a lot, but making improvements in even one or two of these areas will still help move the needle on AI visibility. When brand visibility platform Yext studied 6.8 million AI citations, taking a user’s location into account, it found that 86% came from places a brand can control, such as its website and listings content.
When it comes to AI visibility, my advice to marketers is to stay calm and watch the hype. As I wrote in MediaPost earlier this year, there are a ton of companies out there shouting about their methodologies and capabilities, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed.
Final Thoughts
If you’re responsible for 2026 ad budgets, here’s my advice:
Carve out a small but meaningful test budget for AI media.
Assign someone to own AI search visibility.
Start capturing data on when AI surfaces your brand.
Consumer Behavior to Watch
I used ChatGPT to find the best price for a kitchen item I wanted to give my parents for Christmas (I can’t say what it is since they might be reading this, ha). In about 5 minutes and exactly two prompts, I had my answer and I purchased the product on the spot.
I’m not the only one. Deloitte found that the percentage of US consumers planning to use AI as part of their shopping has more than doubled year over year, from 15% in 2024 to 33% in 2025.
AI Ad News from the GOMMA
What’s the GOMMA? Remember the FANG acronym for Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google? This section of my newsletter features a curated set of AI Ad Economy news from Google, OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon.
Google
Google confirms ads in AI Mode while denying plans for ads in the Gemini app — Google is actively testing ads inside AI Mode and AI Overviews but now tells advertisers there are “no current plans” for ads in the Gemini app, underscoring its split strategy between search monetization and chatbot UX.
Google Ads quietly highlights new AI Mode ad inventory — An official Google Ads update calls out AI Mode tests that surface ads alongside conversational answers, creating fresh inventory around complex, multi-step queries and accelerating the shift toward “zero-click” paid search moments.
OpenAI
OpenAI disables ad-like app suggestions in ChatGPT after user backlash — After screenshots showed Peloton and Target “promotions” inside ChatGPT chats, OpenAI pulled the feature and insisted there are no paid ads, highlighting how fragile trust is around commercial content in chat surfaces.
You can buy your Instacart groceries without leaving ChatGPT — OpenAI and Instacart have launched a new integration that allows users to brainstorm meal ideas, create grocery lists, and complete purchases. This tightens the loop between product discovery and conversion, creating a powerful potential “zero-click” opportunity for brands.
Microsoft
Bloomberg Media COO Julia Beizer to Join Microsoft, Lead AI News Product — Microsoft is building an “AI marketplace” for publishers and asked Beizer to lead its growth. The program is designed to help compensate publishers for the use of their data in AI training.
Meta
Meta signs multi-year AI licensing deals with CNN, Fox News, USA Today and others — Meta will feed licensed news content into Meta AI across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, turning the assistant into a curated news surface and giving publishers paid distribution into conversational feeds.
Publishers weigh upside and risk of Meta’s AI news pipes — New reporting frames these deals as Meta’s late but significant entry into the AI licensing race, offering revenue and links but reviving concerns about dependence on a platform that has repeatedly pivoted away from news.
Amazon
Alexa Plus can now auto-buy products when prices drop — Amazon is extending Rufus-like agentic shopping to Alexa Plus, allowing users to set price thresholds and let the assistant complete purchases automatically, tightening the loop between discovery, pricing and conversion inside Amazon’s walled garden.
Inside Amazon’s AI-Powered Reinvention of Shopping, From Rufus to Conversational Commerce — Amanda Doerr, VP of core shopping at Amazon, details how the Rufus AI shopping assistant help distill disparate review opinions into a structured conversation, and the upper-funnel moment for conversational commerce.
Looking for news about AI and advertising on a daily basis? Check out Tipsheet.ai, from John Ebbert. It’s one of my must reads.
Question of the Week
What’s your top prediction for the AI Ad Economy in 2026? Reply to this email or leave a comment and let me know if you think I’m right or wrong about mine — and what you’re predicting. I’ll feature some of your comments in a future issue.
What’s Debbie Up To?
Here’s a peek at the research I’m working on, where you can catch me on stage and when I’m quoted in the media.
Research I’m Working On
Coming in January:
IAB+Sonata Insights: Attitudes Toward AI-Generated Advertising, Year 2 Trends Study (read our 2024 study here)
Mediaocean: 2026 Advertising Outlook Report (I’m writing the foreword)
Upcoming Speaking Events
Jan. 15, 2026: “The Fragmentation of Consumer Intent & Strategic Growth” at The Athena Project’s Winter Members’ Salon, San Carlos CA
Jan. 28, 2026: Mediaocean webinar: 2026 Advertising Outlook
Feb. 2, 2026: “Building Trust Through AI Transparency” at IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting, Palm Desert CA
March 26, 2026: Shoptalk Spring, Las Vegas NV
In the Media
OpenAI Delays Advertising to Combat Google’s AI Competition (PPC Land)
Meta weighs budget cuts to metaverse unit (BNN Bloomberg) (Advance to the 45:10 mark)
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Thanks for reading,
Debbie
this is great, found you thanks to a referral from rishad t.’s feed — truly appreciate the comparison to social’s growth trajectory and we see how that ended up.
Appreciating this deep dive! AI isn’t just changing how we interact with tech, it’s redefining the entire ad ecosystem. Your breakdown makes it clear why early adoption and experimentation will separate the leaders from the laggards in 2026.
I talk about the latest AI trends and insights. If you’re interested in practical AI strategies for navigating the emerging AI media landscape and advertising opportunities, check out my Substack. I’m sure you’ll find it very relevant and relatable.