AI Growth Summit 2026: Highlights

AI is no longer a future trend for advertising, it’s a structural shift already reshaping how brands grow, create, compete and earn trust. 

That was the defining theme running through this year’s IAB UK AI Growth Summit, where leaders from across advertising, media, technology and creative industries gathered to explore what happens as AI moves from experimentation into operational reality. 

Across the day, conversations moved well beyond productivity gains and automation. Instead, the focus turned to bigger questions around trust, creativity, operating models, responsibility and the future shape of the industry itself. 

“The change will never be this slow again”

Opening the summit, Amelia Torode captured the mood of the day with a line that resurfaced repeatedly in conversations afterwards: “The change will never be this slow again.”

Her session explored what meaningful adaptation looks like in a world of constant acceleration, arguing that the challenge for businesses is no longer reacting to change, but making sense of it quickly enough to create advantage. 

That theme of “sensemaking” became a thread running throughout the event: in a landscape increasingly shaped by automation, human judgement may become more valuable, not less. 

From agencies to agents 

One of the standout sessions of the morning came from Wesley ter Haar, who outlined what he described as the industry’s move into a “post-agency era”. 

“If you are not real time, you are history,” he argued, describing a future where AI agents increasingly handle workflows spanning strategy, production, insights and creative execution. 

The idea of “agentification” surfaced repeatedly throughout the summit, not simply as a productivity story, but as a fundamental operational shift forcing marketers and agencies to rethink how work itself gets done. 

Several speakers pointed toward a future where managing AI agents becomes as important as managing people, with workflows collapsing from months into minutes. 

Trust becomes the defining currency 

As AI systems increasingly shape discovery and decision-making, trust emerged as one of the biggest themes of the day. 

Sessions from Tripadvisor and Microsoft explored how consumers are rapidly shifting from keywords and clicks toward conversational interfaces, AI assistants and delegated decision-making. 

But while adoption is accelerating, consumer concerns remain high, particularly around misinformation, transparency and authenticity. 

“The platforms that win tomorrow may be the ones AI models trust today,” became one of the day’s defining takeaways. 

This shift from attention economy to usefulness economy, where brands compete not just for visibility, but for recommendation and validation inside AI systems, was one of the summit’s most discussed ideas. 

The race to zero UI 

Another recurring conversation centred around the rise of “zero UI” experiences. 

As AI systems increasingly mediate interactions on behalf of consumers, traditional websites, search journeys and interfaces are beginning to feel less central to digital experiences. 

Sessions explored how consumers are moving from searching to conversing, from browsing to delegating, and from clicking to expecting AI systems to act on their behalf. 

For marketers, this creates entirely new challenges around discoverability, relevance and trust, especially in a world where AI agents may become the primary interface between brands and consumers. 

Creativity in the age of AI 

While much of the day focused on infrastructure and operational change, creativity remained central throughout. 

Tom Goodwin delivered one of the afternoon’s most provocative sessions, challenging the industry to stop using AI simply to make existing systems faster and cheaper. 

Instead, he argued that AI should become an opportunity to rethink marketing itself, designing around people rather than tools. 

The conversation also touched on growing concerns around sameness and synthetic creativity. As AI-generated content floods the market, speakers repeatedly returned to the importance of originality, lived experience, nuance and human perspective. 

In a world where content becomes infinite, taste and judgement may become the true differentiators. 

AI isn’t neutral 

One of the most important conversations of the day came from Zehra Chatoo, whose session explored how bias is embedded into AI systems long before prompts are written. 

Her discussion around the “AI judgement penalty”, where identical AI-assisted work is judged differently depending on gender, highlighted the broader risks of narrow participation in shaping AI systems. 

Rather than slowing adoption, the session argued for broader accountability, stronger governance and more inclusive participation in the development of AI technologies. 

Beyond experimentation 

Another major takeaway from the summit was that the industry is rapidly moving beyond the experimentation phase. 

Speakers from Meta, Publicis Sapient and Google focused on what happens when AI becomes embedded inside real business operations rather than isolated pilots. 

The discussion increasingly centred on organisational redesign: connecting systems, restructuring workflows and building businesses capable of operating effectively in AI-mediated environments. 

As one speaker put it, the future won’t belong to organisations using AI occasionally, but to those rebuilt around it entirely. 

Looking ahead 

If there was one clear conclusion from the AI Growth Summit, it was that advertising has entered a new phase of AI adoption. 

The conversation is no longer about whether AI will change the industry. It already is. 

Instead, the challenge now is how organisations adapt, balancing automation with creativity, efficiency with trust, and technological acceleration with human judgement. 

And while many questions remain unresolved, one thing felt undeniable throughout the day: the industry is still only at the beginning.