The end of one year and the beginning of the next is a time for reflection. What worked last year? What didn’t? And what can be improved upon to make this year the best one yet?

Last year wasn’t an easy one for marketers. Budgets got squeezed amid continued economic uncertainty, and marketing campaigns got dragged into the culture wars again and again. But some of the same marketing opportunities and challenges remained.

To kick off 2026, we asked several CMOs and marketers what they are prioritizing in the new year—and lasered in on some of the non-AI-related answers. (Since the ongoing push to put AI at the center of everything continues to be inescapable, we rounded up marketers’ AI-related priorities here.) Take a look at their answers, and after that, be sure to read the biggest challenges they expect to face.

Culture wins: “Our focus is squarely on owning our role in culture—not just participating in it, but actively shaping it. With shorter attention spans and a fragmented landscape, everyone is fighting for a second of focus. Our edge is knowing what’s resonating (and what’s not) and showing up in ways that are unmistakably us. Sports will continue to be a core part of our strategy…But we are just as focused on the unexpected in terms of where and how we show up.”—Kristyn Cook, CMO, State Farm

Data and dollars working smarter and harder: “It’s really table stakes to make your dollars work smarter for you. So what that means in the advertising space is bringing your data such that the platform that you’re choosing can show the right ad to the right person at the right time. This is tedious, and many platforms don’t offer that support today, and it befuddles me. What we’re doing at Snapchat is, if you are a business that’s chosen to start advertising with us, we will actually help you set up that data pipeline, just to make sure your ad dollars work harder.”—Sid Malhotra, VP of SMB, Snap

Continue reading here.—AM, JS, JN, KH, KM

What will the ad industry bet on in 2026? We should get some answers at the first big schmoozefest of the year, CES, which just so happens to take place in America’s gambling capital, Las Vegas. To quote every croupier featured in a movie gambling scene, “Place your bets!”

With the conference kicking off today, thousands of marketers, agency execs, and tech enthusiasts are descending on Sin City, ready to assess what shiny objects will actually be worth their time this year. (The conference counted 142,465 total attendees in 2025.) While CES is often a place where marketers discuss the next big thing—remember the metaverse obsession of the early 2020s?—being new is no longer enough on its own, Kimberly Gilberti, GM, Experian Marketing Services, said.

“People are not coming to CES just to see what’s new,” Gilberti told Marketing Brew in an email. “They’re coming to understand what’s real and what’s scalable.”

This year, the industry is “asking tougher questions about interoperability, measurement, and outcomes,” she wrote. “There is less patience for hype and more urgency around solutions that connect planning, activation, and measurement in one continuous loop. CES feels less like a showcase and more like a working session for how the industry moves forward in 2026.”

I’ll be on the ground taking note of exactly how the industry is planning that forward momentum for the year and writing dispatches from the show—and please be kind, it’s my first CES. Surely, I am not the only person who will be attending for the first time…right?

As the week kicks into gear, here are some notable trends and discussions we’re expecting will be at the forefront.

Read more here.—KM

While it’s hard to top NBCUniversal ad sales chief Mark Marshall’s pink-sequined entrance onstage at the company’s May upfronts presentation, the media giant is looking to give its advertising options some additional sparkle heading into a sports programming-packed 2026.

At a briefing at 30 Rock a few weeks ahead of CES, NBCU announced a roster of new advertising offerings, which include expanded ways to reach viewers on Peacock, more sports buying options, and AI-powered contextual targeting to support buying against news programming.

“As we enter our 100th year in 2026, we’ve never invested more in content. We’ve never invested more in technology,” Marshall said during the briefing.

Some of the tools seem designed to help boost advertiser access to a blockbuster sports programming year for NBCU. Beyond airing February’s Super Bowl, NBC is airing the 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, while Telemundo has the rights to the Spanish-language coverage of the FIFA World Cup. (And that’s not to mention the other programming tentpoles across baseball, basketball, football, and soccer the company has rights to.) Those include:

• Live Total Impact, a cross-platform tool that retargets live event viewing audiences across NBCU properties, is set to scale across events, including what NBCU has dubbed its “Legendary February” sports roster.
• An expansion of Live in Browse, which automatically previews live content on Peacock’s homepage, to more sports programming, along with live entertainment properties like Saturday Night Live.
• Live sports programmatic buying will give advertisers private marketplace biddable access to the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games through partnerships with Amazon DSP, Viant, and other ad-tech vendors. (Universal Ads, Comcast’s cross-platform ads platform, will serve as the exclusive ads manager for NBCU’s coverage of the Games.)

Continue reading here.—JS

Executive moves across the industry.

• Teads, an ad-tech company, named Innovid head marketer Dani Cushion as CMO.
• Nvidia brought on board AI chip startup Groq founder Jonathan Ross after acquiring Groq in a deal announced late last month.
• Saatchi alum Erich Funke joined the creative agency Fixer as chief creative officer.