What Brands Control When AI Buys the Media: Marketing Trends to Watch for Q4 2026
Anyone who has recently opened an ad platform will have noticed that it is making more calls on its own and requesting less input. A good share of marketing trends this quarter is a variation on that theme, and it ties together the six developments we’re keeping an eye on.
How Is the Rise of AI Agents Changing What Brands Need From Their Media Partners?
On October 5th, 2026, at Advertising Week New York, TikTok announced new AI-powered advertising capabilities that require much less human effort now to run discovery, lead generation, and even campaign management. They introduced the Shopping Assistant that answers shoppers’ questions in chat, a Buy Direct feature that lets you check out without leaving the For You page, and Agentic Leads that chats with prospects to qualify them before the advertiser even follows up.
Meta, on the other hand, is testing its AI Ads Manager assistant that can build a campaign, change its targeting, or even shift budget from a plain-language request, with the advertiser approving each step.
L’Oréal offers another indication of the direction of travel. According to its 2025 Universal Registration Document, AI-driven campaigns accounted for 20% of its investment on digital platforms in 2025.
For clients, the interesting question is what’s left to differentiate on once the buying is handled. Are the campaigns reaching the right people? Does the creative give audiences a reason to act? Are conversion signals reliable, and do the reported results correspond with business outcomes?
And while creative is one answer, and first-party data is another, it is the measurement that shows whether any of it worked. Thus, the role of marketers and specialized agencies like ours becomes more critical here than before to provide brands with a solid basis for assessing their return on investment. At M+C Saatchi Performance, this is where we’re keeping an eye on crucial conversations this quarter.
ChatGPT Ads Are Expanding Across Southeast Asia: Is this Opening New Ground for Advertisers?
While the rise of AI agents is influencing marketers’ roles, the generative AI chatbots are reinventing marketing platforms altogether. On 23 September, OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT Ads in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan. Its September product update also introduced Sponsored Agents testing and integrations with HubSpot and Shopify.
This advertising expansion in Southeast Asia opens another channel for marketers to explore as people use more conversational AI platforms to research, compare options, and seek recommendations.
While the feature alone can offer limited indication of whether or not the channel will perform for a particular brand, the key to integrating this new channel is to understand where it fits in each brand’s customer journey. Early campaigns should help set benchmarks pertaining to audience response, conversion quality and cost, with appropriate comparisons against existing channels. Regional strategies will also need local testing as language, payment habits and media costs can differ a great deal across the seven markets.
We’re already testing it for different brands and we covered what you need to know in our latest podcast here.
Are New Industry Standards Raising the Bar for Retail Media and CTV Measurement?
Two recent developments in Europe are pointing toward greater scrutiny of reporting in commerce media. On 1 October, IAB Europe published its final Connected TV (CTV) Measurement Framework and Transparency Principles, and a week later, it announced that Moloco had become the first technology provider certified under its Retail Media Certification Programme.
The CTV framework sets common reporting metrics and expectations, while the retail media certification extends independent assessment to the technology that supports campaign delivery and measurement.
For advertisers investing across retailer websites, apps, video and connected television, comparable reporting is key to evaluating different media opportunities. A platform’s reported ROAS can be useful, but it needs to be read next to attribution methods, the role of other channels and evidence of incremental sales.
Marketers should agree on measurement expectations before committing budgets. Better reporting standards can support more informed comparisons, although they cannot, on their own, tell whether a campaign generated sales that would otherwise have been missed.
India’s Festive Advertising Race Is Putting Performance and Creator Partnerships in Focus
The biggest season for advertising and marketers has already started in India, and brands are out to kill the competition for customer attention. E-commerce platforms like Amazon and Flipkart have launched their major annual sales events and creators are driving content offers for brands to introduce products and influence purchase decisions.
The trend we’re observing this season is that brands are putting their best foot forward with festive campaigns that are connecting cultural relevance with practicality to influence purchase behaviour. WARC’s latest forecast puts India’s per-capita ad spend at USD 13 for 2026, compared with USD 1,395 in the US, leaving plenty of room to grow.
Creator partnerships are helping products enter consumer conversations, while performance campaigns capture demand and support conversion. The two need to work towards compatible objectives, with measurement extending beyond views and engagement to qualified traffic, purchases and customer acquisition costs.
India’s large consumer market offers substantial room for digital advertising to develop. Yet the priority for individual brands should remain the quality of their investment, especially when seasonal competition puts pressure on acquisition costs.
Are Luxury Brands Adapting Festive Campaigns Culturally to Reach Consumers?
The upcoming festive season offers luxury brands an opportunity to connect their products with heritage and personal expression, driving discovery. Chanel’s India website has published a dedicated Diwali fragrance and beauty selection, placing products such as N°5 Eau de Parfum within its festive gifting communications.
Chanel also recently conducted its Diwali 2026 beauty campaign fronted by Ananya Panday, who became the house’s first Indian brand ambassador in 2025 and was named its Fragrance and Beauty ambassador for India in May. A pre-Diwali dinner in Delhi opened the season.
The note here for luxury marketers is on the importance of adapting seasonal messaging to local occasions without losing the brand’s established identity. Cultural relevance need not rely on changing the product or its positioning. It can easily come through the context in which the product is presented, the audience being addressed and the experience surrounding the purchase.
Mobile-First Micro-dramas: Are We Seeing New Opportunities for Brand Integration and Sponsorship?
Declining attention spans has forcibly and necessarily created a new channel for advertisers across Asia. On 10 October, SPH Media began releasing CONNECTED, its first microdrama, sponsored by Singtel. The 24-episode horror-comedy draws on Singaporean folklore and is distributed through SPH Media properties and Singtel’s social channels.
In India, the India Today Group has also announced Life Tak, a mobile-first microdrama platform, with its flagship series premiering on 18 October.
For advertisers, the appeal lies in storytelling that gives audiences a reason to return, rather than presenting a product message in isolation. Sponsorship can place a brand within a narrative, while short vertical episodes offer a format suited to mobile viewing.
The commercial question here is whether audiences stay engaged and whether the brand earns an appropriate place in the story. Reach, completion rates, repeat viewing and brand response are useful yardsticks to consider before committing significant investment to the format.
So, What’s the Big Picture Now?
Making wise choices as the range of tools, channels, and formats increases is a common difficulty faced by marketers in all of these advances. Conversational platforms can present new options for discovery, AI can handle more campaign chores, and developing media formats can provide new avenues for audience outreach. None eliminate the necessity of comprehending clients or assessing business results.
Testing new prospects against predetermined goals, investing in creative that makes people want to pay attention, and establishing measurement that supports decisions beyond the next reporting cycle are the top priorities now.
Knowing where these new capabilities match your business, what data supports additional investment, and where human judgment is still crucial will be the edge that brands need to focus on.
