Viva las CES: What marketers are betting on at CES 2026

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.

Lights, camera…AI: AI mania isn’t new for CES, and this year is sure to be no different. Three of the four keynotes on Tuesday, for example, are focused on how AI is “reshaping” (a word used in two of the three descriptions) how we live.

Prior years’ AI obsession at CES has seen AI as a buzzword with “not a lot of substance,” Greg Swan, senior partner at independent agency Finn Partners, told Marketing Brew. Whether or not that will change is yet to be seen, but Swan expects to see a “big leap in physical AI: robots that don’t just dance, vacuum, and mow the lawn, but act.” In other words, he added, “this could be the year robots get real.”

One area to watch for marketers will be the knock-on effects for Hollywood and, by extension, the (reshaped) Madison Avenue, and much of the conference’s Digital Hollywood track has an AI focus this year. It’s not just theoretical: real deals are starting to take shape. Just look at Disney’s recent deal with OpenAI, which stands to be buzzed about at the conference as it poses questions about what it could mean for the industry.

Brian Yamada, chief innovation officer for VML, believes the AI conversation at this year’s CES will focus on how AI is integrated into brand experiences. “AI, not just being an ingredient, but starting to more dramatically change and impact the experience layer…[of a] product, service, brand, or company,” Yamada said.

Consolidation: This week, it’ll be hard to ignore the ongoing consolidation that’s not only making over Madison Avenue, like the Omnicom takeover of IPG, but also in Hollywood, with Netflix’s plans to buy Warner Bros. (even as Paramount tries to put a stop to it) looming large over industry conversations.

“For me, the consolidation that’s going to be even more interesting is where Warner Brothers will land, assuming it’s Netflix,” Freddy Dabaghi, chief transformation officer at Crispin, told Marketing Brew. “Now you’ve got a massive CTV Goliath in this space [that’s] going to rival, frankly, everybody else. And so then [the question is] going to be, what brands even have a right to win and right to bid in that kind of inventory?”

In other words, if the deal goes through, how will that affect CPMs—and is there a chance of a return to the early days of Netflix’s ad business, when only marketers of a certain caliber could afford it?

It’s not just the big changes that could direct conversations. Even smaller-scale consolidations, like Wpromote acquiring the agency Giant Spoon, are likely to have agency execs debating what to make of the consolidation and its various business implications.

Pre-upfronts: Speaking of streaming, CES traditionally serves as a kickoff to upfront conversations, and sports is likely to continue to creep into those talks this year. Stagwell’s got its one-day Sport Beach event, after all. And this year it’s hard not to zero in on sports, considering the glut of programming tentpoles this year.

“I can see CES serving as a pseudo-upfront play for many brands and agencies, especially with the World Cup and Olympics on the horizon,” Brian Rappaport, CEO, Quan Media Group, wrote in an email, noting that there are other major moments like the midterms that will be key for the marketing and media landscape.

Ultimately, for marketers, this week in Vegas provides a chance to intention-set and prioritize for the year ahead. It’s a chance to “find out what’s worth their time,” VaynerX CMO Avery Akkineni said. “It’s to take a bunch of meetings and say, ‘Great, I met 12 different people, and these are the three that I want to pursue’…and then they’re going to take a meeting with the big partners and their agencies to hear sort of the latest and greatest.”