2026 Digiday Media Buying Summit Recap

The spring 2026 Digiday Media Buying Summit, like the last few years, focused on the integration of AI into both ad tech and agency workflows.

Many senior leaders are pushing for increased use of AI, particularly in creative development and automated campaign management tools. Though, this isn’t always seamless, as teams frequently encounter gaps between leadership expectations and the operational complexities required to deploy AI effectively.

My favorite aspect of the Digiday Summit were the closed‑door town hall discussions. There, I heard firsthand agency leaders’ pain points around AI. The resounding consensus is that AI opens a world of opportunities, but can cause some growing pains.

Integrating Technology with Foundational Media Expertise

In my opinion, the biggest threat the industry is facing with AI is blind over-adoption, in the sense that the strategic understanding of the data can be lost when results are automated. It takes a trained media professional to understand the complexities of media buy types, endeavors, bigger-picture trends, and ultimately, what’s best for a client. It will be imperative for agencies to strike a balance between fully embracing AI, and ensuring teams maintain the foundational understanding necessary to steward their advertiser’s campaigns.

Challenges with Data and Attribution in CTV

Separately, there were the age-old questions around data and attribution when measuring lower-funnel KPI performance for CTV. This became abundantly clear within the town hall meetings, where attendees discussed ongoing difficulties with data accuracy, measurement, and cross-channel attribution. The biggest challenges facing the measurement space are data silos, proving out incrementality, and inconsistencies in MMM results. Traditional MMM categorizes TV as a broad, upper-funnel medium.

However, CTV has evolved into a full‑funnel channel capable of driving brand awareness, consideration and conversions. By treating CTV the same as linear TV within the modeling, mid and lower funnel impact is often not fully captured. This can produce underreporting of CTV’s effectiveness and can often lead to budget migration to other channels with stronger signals as a result.

A point made by many of the keynote speakers was to emphasize proprietary tech stacks, while ensuring that a healthy company culture is being promoted. These inherently may not seem to be related, but responsible integrations with AI play hand-in-hand with accountable media professionals. The agencies that strike the balance between automation and human-powered insights will ultimately maximize efficiencies while building client trust.

At Rain, we believe real value comes from combining the speed AI technology enables with strategic judgement, driven by years of media expertise.

This article is featured in Media Impact Report No. 73. View the full report here.