Consumers are not as hostile to advertising as the industry often fears. A clear majority now reports a positive view of ads, a reversal of the post-lockdown cynicism that defined 2021 and 2022. People give credit when ads show up at the right time with clear utility, when formats feel native, and when creative earns a smile before it asks for a click. That shift matters because it sets the floor for everything else. However, a more receptive audience does not guarantee effective media plans if the craft of orchestration cannot keep pace.
Integration Confidence Slips As Channels Multiply
Marketers once felt near-unanimous confidence in cross-channel integration. That number has fallen meaningfully by 2025, reflecting how fast new surfaces appear and how often measurement standards change. Ironically, consumers say campaigns feel more cohesive than they used to, suggesting that while execution may appear integrated on the surface, it can still be brittle behind the scenes. The implication is as operational as it is creative. Plans need a living map that assigns each channel a role and a handoff, rather than a deck of resized assets chasing a single reach curve.
Where Trust And Attention Meet
Only a few environments consistently score well with both consumers and marketers. Point-of-sale placements and retail media speak to usefulness at the exact moment of choice. In addition, in-person sponsored events convert goodwill into memory because the brand invests in a communal moment. Out-of-home, both classic and digital, benefits from public legitimacy and steadily improving creative possibilities. These contexts feel safe, seen, and helpful, which is why they keep appearing near the top of preference and trust rankings even as digital feeds churn.
Platform Perception Splits
Platform-specific perceptions now drive the largest gaps between what consumers enjoy and what marketers trust. Consumers give entertainment-rich platforms high marks for fun and memorability, while marketers gravitate to environments they regard as operationally reliable for brand safety, measurement, and control. Video giants remain marketer favorites for planning and proof, yet consumer delight lifts a different set of brands that feel playful, creator-led, or community-native. Planning for 2026 requires acknowledging both truths. Budget will keep flowing to the platforms with trustworthy pipes, but creative ideas should be crafted where audiences actually enjoy spending their minutes.
Moreover, media equity is local, as markets with a strong public-space culture often over-index in out-of-home advertising, while others reward cinema or live events. Even within a single region, appetite for news-adjacent advertising can swing with election cycles and platform policy changes. The smartest 2026 plans will replace a one-size-fits-all top-five with a rolling, market-level assessment of which channels earn permission this quarter and which ones need extra guardrails or a different creative approach.
AI Confidence Meets Conditional Trust
On the marketer side, generative AI has moved from experiment to everyday assistant. Teams use it to accelerate versioning, storyboarding, and format adaptation, then layer human judgment for claims and context. Consumers, meanwhile, separate convenience from credibility. They reward AI when it makes the experience faster or more relevant, and they penalize it when it blurs authorship or authenticity. Transparency is not a flourish anymore. Simple disclosure, provenance watermarks, and brand-level safety commitments are the new table stakes for creatives who want to win attention without inviting doubt.
What Works For 2026
In that sense, the playbook that emerges is pragmatic. Anchor plans in high-equity contexts where trust and attention already overlap. Treat social video and creator platforms as craft disciplines, not distribution pipes. Build an orchestration layer that is visible to everyone on the team and updated as the plan shifts. Pre-test for perceived authenticity and safety, not just recall, especially when AI is in the stack. And reserve a rotating share of budget for formats that are rising fast, such as shoppable content or online events, but only with creative written for their grammar from frame one.
Marketers often talk about “meeting people where they are,” yet the bar has moved. People are telling us not only where they are but also why they choose to engage there. Trust comes from a context that feels public, useful, and well-lit. Attention still flocks to entertaining, creator-led spaces. The brands that square that circle will spend less time arguing about channels and more time building ideas that suit the room they enter.
