Making Waves: AI scales up, safer work creeps in, and YouTube gets closer to live sport

1. AI-powered advertising is scaling fast

AI-driven media buying is no longer a shiny new feature that brands are dipping their toes into. Recent projections from Business Insider suggest AI-powered ad spend is set to increase to 63% this year for brands with tools like Google Performance Max, and Meta Advantage+ leading the charge.

TikTok’s AI-powered GMV Max media buying tool is also extremely popular. With built-in ROI protection and automatic content gathering, it’s no surprise. But is the trade-off for more efficiency worth the lack of control?

For many teams, this is now the default way to run campaigns. Efficient? Yes. But there’s also a growing reliance on systems, not people, to decide where the budget goes and what performs.

Why it matters: There’s a growing reliance on automation to take care of the mechanics of media buying. Whilst that’s great for timesaving, it means getting the inputs right is even more important. Creative, positioning and audience strategy must be nailed from the outset. If they’re not, AI will just distribute a bad campaign faster.

2) Under pressure, brands are playing it safe

There’s a growing theme across industry commentary: as pressure increases, risk appetite decreases. Tighter budgets, broader objectives, and higher scrutiny are pushing teams towards creating safer, more easily justifiable work.

While the result is often competent, it’s largely mediocre and forgettable. More often than not, work that ticks boxes internally struggles to stand out and have much impact externally. For the brands that are brave, it provides a real opportunity to cut through.

Why it matters: Safe work rarely drives growth. It blends in, rather than building distinctiveness or demand. The challenge for marketing teams is balancing accountability with ambition. The brands that hold their nerve tend to be the ones that win.

3) YouTube moves closer to the centre of global sport

YouTube’s partnership with FIFA ahead of the 2026 World Cup is another signal of how the platform has evolved from a video-sharing social media site. It’s quickly becoming part of how major cultural moments are distributed, experienced and monetised.

According to YouTube: “This collaboration will enhance opportunities for Media Partners to extend their reach, for creators to share unique perspectives on the competition and bring the next generation of fans closer to the FIFA World Cup action.”

Why it matters: The lines between broadcaster, social platform, and publisher continue to blur. For marketers, that means thinking less in conventional channels and more in attention. Where people watch, who they trust and how content is packaged matters more than ever before.

4) Local relevance is becoming a differentiator, not a detail

Recent Ramadan campaigns from brands like Tesco, IKEA, and Canva show how localisation is evolving. This isn’t about translating assets. It’s about building work around real behaviours, cultural moments, and community dynamics. Thanks to the power of social media and online publishers, these local campaigns can then find global resonance.

The strongest examples feel like they genuinely belong within a culture. They reflect how people actually live, rather than how brands assume they do. We wrote about this in-depth recently – check it out here.

Why it matters: As brands expand across markets, relevance becomes harder to maintain. The ones that get it right aren’t just adapting their creative, they’re starting with insight and building from there. It’s a slower-burn, but significantly more impactful.

5) The most effective marketing isn’t trying to do everything at once

WARC’s Effective 100 highlights a familiar pattern. The best campaigns are clear on what they’re trying to do and disciplined in how they do it. They’re not overloaded with differing messages, channels, or objectives.

In contrast, much of the work outside that top tier feels stretched. Trying to deliver brand, performance, engagement and conversion in one hit, often diluting all of them in the process.

Why it matters: With the ability to produce so much more for less, clarity is becoming even more of a competitive advantage than ever before. In a more complex ecosystem, the brands that win are often the ones that simplify, focus and commit, rather than trying to cover everything.

The thread running through all of this is balance. Between automation and control. Between scale and relevance. Between short-term pressure and long-term impact.

For brands looking to grow, the opportunity isn’t in choosing one side or the other. It’s in knowing where to focus and making the work count where it matters most.

Want to discuss any of this in more detail? Get in touch with our Founder and CEO, Fraser Bradshaw, on LinkedIn or email.