9 Things You Need to Know About the State of Media Buying in 2026

Updated October 2026

Media buying has never been bigger, and it has never been easier to lose track of where the money goes. Here are nine media buying trends worth knowing if you buy media, manage the people who do, or sign off on the budget. 

What Is Media Buying?

Media buying is the purchase of advertising space and time across channels, from display, social and connected TV to audio, out-of-home and print. The aim is to put your ads in front of the right audience, in the right place, at a price that makes sense. Media buys happen in two main ways: directly with a publisher, or programmatically, where software bids for each impression in an auction.

What Is a Media Buyer?

A media buyer plans and carries out those media buys. They choose placements, negotiate or bid on price, set frequency and targeting, and check that ads ran where and when they should. Media buyers work at agencies and publishers, and more and more inside brands.

Why Does Media Buying Matter?

Because it decides whether anyone sees your creative. A strong ad in the wrong place, shown to the wrong person too often or on a poor-quality site, won't perform. Media also takes the largest share of most campaign budgets, so small efficiency gains add up fast.

Nine Things to Know About Media Buying in 2026

1. Media Buying Spend Is Growing Fast, and a Few Companies Are Taking Most of It

The IAB raised its forecast for US ad spend growth in September to 12.3%, up from 9.5% in January. A strong first half, helped by the Winter Olympics and the FIFA World Cup, pushed the number up. Growth varies a lot by channel:

Source: IAB, September 2026 update to the 2026 Outlook Study, 10 September 2026. Figures are projected year-over-year growth in US ad spend.

Globally, WPP Media expects ad revenue to grow 8.9% to $1.3 trillion this year. Alphabet, Meta and Amazon account for 57.6% of it outside China. Buyers are planning around that shift: in Comscore's survey of 200+ media buyers, 45% were moving budget from linear TV to CTV, and CTV was set to take 26% of media budgets on average.

So the planning question has changed. It used to be which open-web exchanges to use. Now it is how to divide one budget between walled gardens, CTV, commerce media and the open web. And when three companies hold more than half the market, you have less leverage on price, data access and reporting. You have to be more deliberate to keep the control you have.

What to do: Set a target split across channel types and review it every quarter. Pick one outcome metric that works across all of them, so each platform isn't the only judge of its own results.

2. AI Is Running More of the Media Buy, So the Goal You Set Matters More

Eighty-two percent of buyers surveyed by Comscore call AI-powered optimization essential. They plan to use it well beyond bidding: 88% for audience modeling, 77% for pacing and bids, and 71% for measurement and attribution.

The IAB's September data adds some nuance. The share of buyers using generative AI in media campaigns fell from 78% in January to 69%. Buyers are still adopting AI, but they seem to be choosier about where it pays off.

An algorithm does what you ask it to do. Tell it to maximize clicks and it will find the cheapest clicks available, which tend to come from the weakest inventory. Point it at conversions or a downstream outcome and the same system behaves very differently. Pacing has a similar catch: a campaign can spend its budget perfectly and still show one person the same ad too many times. No bid adjustment fixes that, because it is a creative fatigue problem. Test faster, then refresh before the audience tires.

What to do: Write down the goal each automated campaign is optimizing to, and check it against the result your business wants. Schedule creative refreshes alongside budget reviews.

3. Brand Safety Now Includes "AI Slop"

Brand safety used to mean keeping your ad away from content that sat badly next to it, and avoiding ad fraud. It now also covers sites that exist to harvest ad revenue. In its Q1 2026 benchmark, the ANA recorded made-for-advertising (MFA) exposure of 1.1% of impressions, after 0.4% to 0.6% in every quarter of 2025. The ANA flagged "AI slop" as a new kind of MFA site: machine-generated pages with little for a reader and plenty of ad slots.

Buyers are watching. In the IAB's September survey, 38% said they are concerned about AI slop. The share of impressions is still small, but a jump that size in one quarter is hard to ignore, and MFA inventory is cheap. Cost-driven automation moves toward cheap inventory unless you steer it elsewhere.

A short supply chain gives you a clearer view of where your ads ran. It doesn't tell you whether the site was worth running on.

What to do: Update your inclusion lists and MFA exclusions now. Pull a placement report and compare where spend landed with where you meant it to go. If a partner can't produce that report, you have your answer.

4. Wasted Programmatic Spend Is Falling, Though Slowly

The ANA's Programmatic Transparency Benchmark measures how much programmatic spend reaches what it calls TrueImpressions: impressions that are measurable, viewable, fraud-free and not MFA. The market-level figure was 45.1% in Q2 2026, released in August, up from 43.3% in Q1. For a sense of how far the market has come, the ANA's 2023 study found that only $0.36 of each dollar entering a demand-side platform reached a consumer. The two measures differ, so read that as direction, not an exact comparison.

The Q2 numbers show where the money goes now. Invalid traffic, the measurable part of ad fraud, accounts for just 0.1% of spend. Transaction costs take 27.2%. Non-viewable impressions account for 10.1%, down from 13.3%, and a large share of spend still lands on inventory nobody can measure. Ad fraud, the usual headline, is no longer the main leak.

The ANA also noted that Q1's improvement came mainly from better viewability, not lower fees. The supply chain is cleaner, but moving money through it still costs a lot.

Citation capsule: The ANA's Q2 2026 benchmark put market-level TrueAdSpend at 45.1%, up from 43.3% in Q1. Invalid traffic was 0.1% of spend, while transaction costs took 27.2%.

What to do: Ask your DSP or agency to break spend into working media, fees, non-viewable and non-measurable impressions. Start with the biggest bucket. For most buyers that is fees and measurability.

5. The Gap Between the Best Buyers and the Rest Is Widening

The same ANA benchmark splits advertisers into higher and lower performers. In Q1 2026, higher performers turned 54.0% of programmatic spend into qualified impressions. Lower performers turned 32.1%. That 21.9-point difference is the largest the benchmark has recorded. In Q2 it was 52.3% against 31.1%.

CPM hides what that gap costs. In Q2, lower performers paid less per thousand impressions ($6.55 against $7.90) and more per thousand impressions that counted ($13.80 against $11.94). Cheap inventory stops being cheap once you count what doesn't deliver. The ANA puts the TrueCPM optimization opportunity at 52.5% for lower performers, compared with 33.8% for higher performers.

The ANA doesn't define where the line between the two groups falls, so treat this as a pattern, not a ranking. The pattern is clear, though: advertisers who do well are choosier about inventory and better at measuring it.

Citation capsule: In the ANA's Q1 2026 benchmark, higher-performing advertisers converted 54.0% of programmatic spend into qualified impressions, against 32.1% for lower performers. That 21.9-point gap is the largest on record.

What to do: Judge buys on cost per qualified impression, not CPM. Ask for log-level data so you can calculate it, and add it to your standard reporting.

6. Principal Media Buying Is the New Transparency Question

Buyers have asked for years for an end to the "black box" and a clear view of where their money goes. The newest version of that question is about principal media buying, where an agency buys inventory on its own account and sells it on to you. Adoption is rising quickly. The ANA's March 2026 study of 114 member marketers (fieldwork October 2025 to January 2026) found that 58% had used principal media in the past year, up from 47% in the earlier study, and 56% expect to use it in the coming year, up from 41%. Most (76%) named lower costs as the main benefit.

Governance hasn't kept up. Ninety percent of marketers said their top concern is whether the principal media recommended to them is in their best interest, up from 79% two years ago. Only 57% have company guidelines for it, and 63% say their agency contracts address it, which leaves more than a third whose contracts don't or who aren't sure. A separate ANA member survey reported in May found that 61% had updated their contracts to cover principal media, 16% hadn't and 23% didn't know. Principal media was the top factor increasing transparency concerns.

Principal media can be a good deal, and many buyers report real savings. The risk is using it without knowing the margin or what the same buy would have cost on a fee basis.

Citation capsule: The ANA's March 2026 study found 58% of marketers used principal media in the past year, but only 57% have company guidelines for it. Ninety percent worry it may not be in their best interest.

What to do: Ask your agency in writing when it buys as principal, what it earns on those buys and what the alternative would cost. Get the answer into the contract and set a cap, so principal media doesn't become the default by accident.

7. In-House Media Buying Is Now Hybrid, and Creative Capacity Decides How Well It Works

Most brands that bring media buying in-house don't bring all of it. A common model keeps strategy, data and selected channels inside the company, while agencies or specialists handle scale and capabilities the team can't justify building. So the useful question isn't "in-house or agency?" It is "which parts of buying give us an advantage when we own them?"

The benefits are control and speed: tighter budget oversight, direct access to data, and closer work between the people who buy media and the people who make the ads. The cost is that an in-house team inherits the whole chain. More channels and placements mean more formats and variants, and creative production is usually where a small team runs out of capacity first.

That is where creative automation helps. It lets in-house teams scale creative production without growing headcount at the same rate, with speed and control built in. Bannerflow customers report production times 80–90% faster. SEGA produces campaigns across global markets two-thirds faster. Coop runs weekly omnichannel campaigns. CMC Markets saw a 23% increase in post-click conversions with topical display messaging. For a Marketing Ops lead, that means going from strategy to launch with fewer blockers.

What to do: List your buying and creative tasks and mark each as "owning it gives us an advantage" or "renting it is cheaper". Move the first group in-house on purpose, with training and tooling, and keep the second with partners. Then check that creative production can keep up with how fast your buying team can now move. The enterprise playbook for scaling creative production is a good place to start.

8. Measurement Is the Weak Point, and AI Is Making It Harder

Most advertisers have the tools. The WFA and Ebiquity's July 2026 research (71 senior leaders and 25 interviews with multinational advertisers, representing about $40bn in annual spend) found that eight in ten run marketing mix modeling and brand lift studies. Only 13% rate themselves strong at getting from data to insight quickly, and fewer than 3% are fully confident they can separate short-term performance from long-term brand impact. Forty-six percent are at the lowest maturity level for combining their data into one view, and more than 60% call walled gardens a severe or critical measurement challenge. Even so, 75% expect more than half of budget decisions to be measurement-led within three years.

AI search adds a new problem. In the IAB's September survey, 86% of buyers said they are changing or expect to change how they measure performance within 12 months because of conversational AI tools and agents. The most common response (48%) is tracking brand visibility and citations inside AI tools, and the biggest challenge (45%) is comparing AI-driven customer journeys with traditional ones. Customer acquisition is now the top media goal, cited by 63% of buyers, up nine points since January.

For campaign metrics, buyers have settled on outcomes. In Comscore's survey, conversion rate ranked first (62%), followed by ROAS (47%), reach and frequency (46%) and click-through rate (39%).

Creative has to keep pace. A campaign running across display, CTV and audio needs formats, lengths and messages built for each placement, not one master resized for all of them. The IAB found buyers putting more focus on creator and influencer partnerships (54%) and contextual advertising (45%), which adds even more formats to plan for. Data doesn't replace creativity, it enhances it: the teams that feed results back into their creative each week learn what works long before the next quarterly review. If your data isn't improving your creative yet, here is why.

Citation capsule: The WFA and Ebiquity's July 2026 research found only 13% of advertisers rate themselves strong on speed from data to insight, and 75% expect more than half of budget decisions to be measurement-led within three years.

What to do: Agree on the outcome metric before the brief is written, and report it across channels. Build creative variants for each placement from the start, and make sure the people who own media and creative see the same results.

9. The Open Web's Infrastructure Is Being Rewired

In September 2026, Judge Leonie Brinkema declined to order the sale of Google's AdX exchange in the US government's ad tech case. She ordered six years of behavioral remedies instead, under a court-appointed monitor. Google must connect AdX and its publisher ad server (DFP) to the open-source Prebid system, submit AdX bids to rival publisher ad servers on the same terms DFP receives, share win and loss data with publishers, and document how DFP chooses auction winners. The court did not restrict DV360. Google has said it disagrees with the monopoly finding and will appeal, so the remedies could change.

If they hold, buyers and publishers could get more competition among exchanges and a clearer view of how auctions are decided. What that does to fees and pricing isn't known yet, and any firm forecast would be a guess. What is clear is that the structure of open-web buying is under review, and the effects will take time to arrive.

Waiting for the outcome isn't a strategy. The ANA data above shows that supply path choices affect results today. For the wider picture, read the future of programmatic advertising in 2026 and beyond.

What to do: Keep your supply path flexible. Track which exchanges and paths deliver qualified impressions, avoid long commitments to a single route, and revisit your plan after any appeal.

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FAQs

What is media buying?

Media buying is the purchase of advertising space and time across channels, from display, social and connected TV to audio, out-of-home and print. Buyers either deal directly with a publisher or buy programmatically, where software bids for each impression in an auction. The aim is to reach the right audience, in the right place, at a sensible price.

What does a media buyer do?

A media buyer plans and carries out media buys. They choose placements, negotiate or bid on price, set frequency and targeting, and check that ads ran where and when they should. Media buyers work at agencies and publishers, and more and more inside brands.

How much programmatic ad spend is wasted?

According to the ANA's Q2 2026 benchmark, 45.1% of programmatic spend reached impressions that were measurable, viewable, fraud-free and not on made-for-advertising sites. That means just over half did not. The biggest losses are now transaction costs (27.2% of spend), non-viewable impressions (10.1%) and inventory that cannot be measured.

Is ad fraud still the main problem in programmatic buying?

Not by volume. In the ANA's Q2 2026 data, invalid traffic accounted for 0.1% of spend, while transaction costs took 27.2%. Fees, viewability and measurability now cost most buyers more than outright fraud, although made-for-advertising exposure rose to 1.1% of impressions in Q1 2026.

What are made-for-advertising (MFA) sites?

MFA sites are built mainly to harvest ad revenue rather than serve readers. The ANA recorded MFA exposure of 1.1% of impressions in Q1 2026, up from 0.4% to 0.6% through 2025, and flagged machine-generated pages, or AI slop, as a new type. Update your inclusion lists and MFA exclusions regularly, and check placement reports.

What is principal media buying?

Principal media buying is when an agency buys inventory on its own account and sells it on to a client. The ANA's March 2026 study found that 58% of marketers used it in the past year, but only 57% have company guidelines for it, and 90% worry it may not be in their best interest. Ask your agency when it buys as principal and what it earns on those buys.

Should brands bring media buying in-house?

Many do, but most go hybrid. A common model keeps strategy, data and selected channels in-house, while agencies or specialists handle scale and capabilities the team cannot justify building. In-housing improves control and speed, but the team also takes on more creative production, so check that creative capacity can keep up.

Which media channels are growing fastest in 2026?

The IAB's September 2026 update projects US growth of 16.5% for social media, 15.6% for connected TV and 13.6% for commerce media. Podcasts (8.7%), paid search (8.1%) and digital out-of-home (7.0%) are growing more slowly, while linear TV is projected to fall 1.5%.

How should you measure media buying performance?

Start with outcomes. In Comscore's 2026 survey, buyers ranked conversion rate first (62%), ahead of ROAS (47%), reach and frequency (46%) and click-through rate (39%). Judge buys on cost per qualified impression, not CPM, and report one outcome metric across channels.

What does the Google ad tech ruling mean for media buyers?

In September 2026 the court declined to order the sale of Google's AdX exchange and ordered six years of behavioral remedies instead, including links to Prebid and equal bid terms for rival publisher ad servers. Google has said it will appeal. The effect on fees and pricing is not yet known, so keep your supply path flexible.

Related Reading

• Programmatic Advertising: The Ultimate Guide
• How to Create the Perfect In-House Marketing Team
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