A confluence of major sporting events, election spending, and rapid artificial intelligence adoption is set to make the U.S. advertising market grow faster than many anticipated this year.
The IAB expectation shared with Beet.TV suggests a nearly double-digit expansion, suggesting robust health despite lingering economic uncertainty.
Underpinning this growth are three distinct drivers:
- A slate of cyclical events is expected to inject billions in new spending.
- AI is fundamentally reshaping both the measurement of advertising effectiveness.
- The operational efficiency of campaign execution for buyers.
“The industry is still incredibly healthy,” said Chris Bruderle, vp, industry insights and content strategy, IAB, in this video interview with Beet.TV. “Those three things are really what’s driving our very positive outlook for the year.”
CTV flexes its performance muscles
“We are still seeing the migration from folks from linear to CTV,” Bruderle said. At the same time, platforms are aggressively building out their content libraries, particularly with live programming, which serves to deepen engagement with existing audiences. “You have this incredible inflection point with CTV that makes it a great place to be.”
The perception of CTV among advertisers is also evolving. According to Bruderle, buyers increasingly view the channel as a full-funnel tool capable of driving measurable outcomes, a departure from its earlier reputation as primarily an upper-funnel brand medium.
.“As the measurement, as the innovation, as the shopability increases there, it is now becoming a performance channel just like search and social have been for decades,” he said.
The agentic AI advantage
While artificial intelligence has been part of the ad-tech stack for years in the form of machine learning, Bruderle points to two recent developments that represent a more fundamental change. The first is a major shift in how consumers discover content and brands through conversational chatbots.
“We’re seeing a significant shift in how consumers are discovering and interacting with brands and content, and that is through the AI-driven large language models,” he said. “If I’m a brand, the front part of my store essentially is changing. My storefront is changing.”
The second development is the rise of agentic AI, which is altering how brands execute campaigns. An IAB study found that, among 15 tactics, five of the top six things buyers plan to focus on are directly tied to AI. “That is fundamentally changing now how brands are able to work and execute their campaigns,” Bruderle explained. “That’ll significantly change how workflows happen. The next thing that we’re looking for is how that’s going to operationalize at scale.”
Trust in an era of AI slop
The proliferation of AI-generated content has created a new challenge for advertisers: maintaining consumer trust in an environment clouded by what some call “AI slop.” This has elevated the importance of transparency and authenticity for brands engaging with audiences online.
“It’s not just about was my brand seen? Was my messaging seen? Did I get the reach? But was it trusted?” Bruderle said. “There’s now an inherent question of whether the content I’m seeing is AI driven or it’s human driven.”
This growing consumer skepticism, coupled with emerging state and international legislation like the European AI Act, is compelling the industry to establish new standards.
In response, the IAB recently launched an AI Transparency and Disclosure Framework to provide guidance. The framework, Bruderle said, “gives them guidelines for how transparent brands and publishers should be when they’re creating content and ads online using AI.”
