The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) 2026 Outlook Study, released ahead of this week’s NewFronts event in New York, projects US advertising spend will grow 9.5% this year, with digital channels pulling further ahead of the market. Social media advertising is expected to rise 14.6%, connected TV (CTV) 13.8%, and commerce media 12.1%. Five of the six top priorities cited by brands and agencies surveyed are AI-driven.
The headline numbers matter, but the structural shift underneath them matters more. The IAB’s framing has changed. AI is no longer positioned as an emerging trend or an experimental add-on. The trade body’s own language describes it as the connective tissue linking media, measurement, creative and customer experience. That’s infrastructure language, not innovation language. It signals that the industry’s largest buyers now treat AI not as something to trial but as something to build on.
For anyone working in AI video, the implications are direct. The advertising categories showing the fastest growth, social, CTV and commerce media, are all formats where short-form video is either dominant or rapidly gaining share. The combination of rising ad budgets and AI-driven production tools creates a clear commercial window: brands want more video content, they want it faster, and they’re increasingly willing to let AI handle parts of the production pipeline that used to require manual work.
The NewFronts event itself has moved from its traditional May slot to March this year, a scheduling decision the IAB says reflects the shift to always-on investment cycles. Presentations across the four days are expected to focus on AI-powered creative automation, real-time audience matching and cross-platform measurement. For AI video tool providers, this is where their products meet the media buyers who control the budgets.
This applies at every scale. If you’re a solo creator or small studio producing short-form video with AI tools, the same budget shift that’s reshaping how major brands buy media is also creating demand for the kind of work you can deliver. Brands that once needed agencies and production houses to produce ad variants, social clips and product videos are increasingly open to working with smaller, faster operators who can turn work around at a fraction of the cost. If you’re not already talking to brands about what you can produce for them, this is a good week to start.
