Brandweek Pulse 2026: The Orchestration Gap
AI is changing advertising. Orchestration will define what comes next.
At Brandweek 2026, Clinch surveyed senior brand and agency executives to understand what’s creating the most complexity in advertising today, where fragmentation is holding organizations back, and how AI is expected to reshape the campaign lifecycle. The findings reveal an industry at an inflection point.
Marketers are embracing AI, but they’re doing so across an increasingly complex ecosystem of channels, platforms, data and disconnected workflows. And while AI adoption today is largely concentrated around individual tasks, executives see a much bigger shift ahead: toward automated operations and increasingly autonomous campaign management.
Inside the Report:
- Why 65% of executives say keeping pace with AI and new technology is adding complexity
- Where fragmentation is creating the greatest operational challenges
- Why 90% see a gap between campaign intelligence and the ability to operationalize it efficiently and in real time
- Where marketers are putting AI to work today—and where they expect it to have the greatest impact next
- Why connected data, creative and media will become increasingly critical as advertising enters the agentic era
The takeaway: The next AI advantage won’t come from adding more tools. It will come from making the entire advertising operation work more intelligently together.
