At the 2026 IAB Video Leadership Summit, senior leaders from across the video ecosystem gathered to discuss the friction that is preventing the industry from moving forward. The room agreed that AI will make the industry more efficient, but usefulness and trustworthiness kept surfacing as two different things. Across the day, it was made clear that the job hasn’t changed — it’s still matchmaking — finding the right audience and serving them the right content at the right time. What’s changed is the pace, the information available at the moment, and opportunity that AI and new technology can unlock.
Where the Money’s Going
Part II of IAB’s Video Ad Spend report showed digital video crossing $80 billion in 2026, growing about 20% faster than the overall ad market. Business outcomes have effectively become the price of entry: cost fell as a reason buyers cut spend while audience delivery rose, and targeting jumped sharply as a selection criterion, especially among smaller buyers. But trust remains thin — even the most trusted path, buying direct from publishers, only reaches a little over half of the market.
AI’s Fast Infrastructure, Slow Trust
The opening panel scored the industry’s AI progress bluntly: strong marks on infrastructure, weak marks on governance. The consensus was direct — speed without trust isn’t a plan, it’s a liability. Agentic systems still lack the transparency and audit trails that build confidence over time. That same tension between capability and governance ran through a related discussion of agents as a new audience of their own — brands are learning to market to them directly, and agencies are learning to write briefs for them, not just for people.
Signals That Complement, Not Compete
A town hall on contextual targeting opened with a case study that beat benchmark by nearly 60% using radical, URL-level transparency and an in-flight optimization loop — with hundreds of individual content pieces driving. The room agreed data isn’t the constraint — the opportunity is unlocking it in ways that actually matter, particularly for fast-moving, unpredictable content, where contextual signals could give advertisers real reassurance but currently go untapped.
All Video Is Performance Video
The Streaming, Commerce and Performance panel made the day’s boldest claim: there’s no longer a meaningful line between brand video and performance video — all video is performance video now. The room’s guidance was blunt: overengineer the plan and you’ll underserve the outcome. It’s also a market with real pricing inefficiency with panelists claiming that partners charging premium CPMs without matching performance won’t stay competitive for long.
Connected is in CTV’s Name
Attendees pushed on a persistent problem: the industry still defaults to linear-style planning habits instead of taking advantage of the addressability, interactivity, and precision that come with being internet connected (CTV). A parallel conversation on evolving workflows made the case that fixing this isn’t just a mindset shift — it requires restructuring the actual buying and operational workflows built for a linear world. Specifically within Live streaming, the real blockers are commercial and structural, not technical: adoption of recent IAB Tech Lab protocols (e.g. LEAP), legacy sales organizations still built to sell ratings points, and traditional TV crediting rules are preventing the opportunity to scale Live.
If you’re interested in joining the IAB’s Video Board to be part of shaping our video roadmap, please reach out to the Media Center.
Thank you to our Platinum Sponsor, Moloco, and our supporting sponsors, Atmosphere TV, Olyzon, and Claritas for helping make this year’s Summit possible.
