In The Know: Media Industry Update JAN 2026
The media pulse decoded by your agency.
Contents:
- OUTs & INs for 2026
OUTs and INs for 2026 – an Audience Group Perspective
Welcome to our first In The Know media industry update for the year.
Rather than start the year with predictions or big trend reports, we thought we’d kick off with a few of the shifts we’re seeing quietly take shape as we head into 2026.
If even one of these “INs” sparks a question, a challenge, or a conversation about what you want to lean into this year, let’s chat!
OUT: Deep Emotional Persuasion
Because most buying isn’t deliberated. The day-to-day buying behaviour that actually drives volume and growth is habitual, and habits are influenced through environments rather than extensive justification.
IN: Changing the Conditions of Choice
Because growth comes from making the brand easy to choose: easy to remember, easy to buy, and easy to repeat. Advertising is much better at that than it is at trying to change how people think.
OUT: Channel-first planning
Because when planning starts with channels, you’re letting the platforms decide who to reach and optimising around that. That’s scaling an inefficient approach, which helps explain why growth often plateaus.
IN: Audience Architecture
Because growth comes from designing longer term demand systems, not buying audiences ad-hoc.
OUT: Optimising to clicks
Because, as you know, clicks are cheap, misleading and are rarely your converters in the programmatic environment.
IN: Custom Bidding Algorithms
Because the brands who win will use programmatic to teach systems what “good” actually means, instead of letting platforms default to clicks.
OUT: Create Once Publish Everywhere (COPE)
Because what works in feed rarely works in sound, scroll, or story. COPE is structurally misaligned with how platforms work.
IN: ‘Fit for Platform’ Creative Ideas
Because you’re building creative to be executed on platforms that actively reward behaviour and engagement. Narrative consistency and brand storytelling logic still matter, but they need to be expressed appropriately within each environment.
OUT: Trying to solve everything yourself
Because no marketer should go it alone. No marketer can match the speed of a connected ecosystem.
IN: Leaning on Your Agency Village
Because modern marketing is moving too fast to keep up and AI tools only go so far. 10 heads with a range of subject matter expertise are always going to be better than one.
OUT: Google Search as the primary discovery engine
Because cultural drivers (what people see, hear, and participate in) help consumers discover brands before intent even forms.
IN: Getting Good at Social Discovery
Because advantage now comes from being deliberate about social discovery: meeting audiences where they are actively looking for answers inside social platforms, through conversations, threads, comments, and posts.
OUT: SEO as a growth strategy
Because ranking matters less when AI writes the response.
IN: AEO, AIO and GEO (Answer, AI and Generative Engine Optimisation)
Because when machines generate the answers, brands need new tools and optimisation approaches to be discoverable within them.
OUT: Too Polished
Because flawless is starting to look fake.
IN: Human Edge
Because brands that feel genuinely human are deliberately designed to display judgement, presence and personality.
