The Future of Digital Advertising: Five AdTech Developments to Watch

Digital advertising is entering a new era shaped by AI, privacy regulation, retail media, and changing consumer behavior. Columbia Business School’s Miklos Sarvary and Kinshuk Jerath explore five major ad tech developments transforming how brands target, measure, and engage audiences in the digital ecosystem.

Overview

In this webinar recording, Miklos Sarvary, the Carson Family Professor of Business, and Kinshuk Jerath, the Arthur F. Burns Chair of Free and Competitive Enterprise, discuss the rapidly evolving Adtech landscape. The session identifies five pivotal developments expected to influence digital advertising for the next decade: the deprecation of third-party cookies, the integration of generative AI, the rise of retail media networks, the growth of connected TV, and increased government antitrust regulation. The discussion explores how these shifts are moving the industry toward brand-oriented advertising and unprecedented levels of productivity.

Key Takeaways

  • The Shift to Brand Advertising: As third-party cookies are deprecated, narrow performance targeting is becoming more difficult, leading advertisers to rely more on brand building and privacy-safe solutions like Google’s Privacy Sandbox.
  • Generative AI as a Productivity Engine: AI is revolutionizing the industry by automating expensive market research and allowing for the creation of thousands of customized ad variations in a single hour, significantly increasing response rates.
  • The Rise of Retail Media: Expected to represent 20% of all digital advertising by 2026, retail media uses first-party data to create a win-win-win for retailers, advertisers, and consumers by improving both ad relevance and organic search results.
  • Democratization of TV Ads: Connected TV (CTV) is opening the television medium to smaller advertisers who previously lacked the budget for traditional broadcast, while enabling big brands to deploy more aesthetic, digital-first campaigns.
  • Heightened Regulatory Scrutiny: Increased US government antitrust action against major platforms like Google and Meta is expected to reduce their monopoly hold, eventually providing marketers with a wider variety of niche services.

What skills are essential for middle management to navigate these Adtech changes? 
Professionals need a mix of timeless skills—such as understanding the difference between correlation and causal impact in data—and the ability to learn how to learn to stay ahead of volatile trends like TikTok or new government regulations.

How is social media advertising evolving beyond traditional ads? 
The industry is seeing a massive surge in influencer marketing, particularly through micro-influencers and virtual influencers created by AI. These creators are effectively bridging the gap between entertainment and commerce, driving lower funnel purchases that traditional social ads often struggled to trigger.

Beyond content creation, what is the broader impact of AI on the future of advertising? 
AI will drastically improve productivity across the entire marketing spectrum, including breaking down language barriers for global sales, providing 24/7 customer support via chatbots, and assisting graphic designers by generating dozens of conceptual ideas in minutes.

Webinar Speakers

Miklos Sarvary, Carson Family Professor of Business and Co-Faculty Director, Media and Technology Program, is a faculty director of the AI-driven marketing strategy program.

Miklos Sarvary

Carson Family Professor of Business
Co-Faculty Director, Media and Technology Program
Vice Dean for Executive Education

Kinshuk Jerath, Professor of Business Marketing at Columbia Business School, is a faculty director of the AI-driven marketing strategy program that provides training to executives on leveraging new technologies to enhance customer relationships.

Kinshuk Jerath

Arthur F. Burns Professor of Free and Competitive Enterprise

Chair of the Marketing Division

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