What we learned at the 2026 Paid Media Summit
I spent last Tuesday at the Paid Media Summit in London, and it was a good reminder of how quickly things are changing. We’re not just managing keywords anymore – it’s now about intent, AI-driven discovery, and real human behaviour.
While the summit focused heavily on where things are heading with AI, one thing that kept coming up was that we shouldn’t overlook the tools we already have.
Google Trends in particular was mentioned a few times as something that’s still massively underused. It gives you a really clear view of how demand is shifting – whether that’s emerging topics or seasonal spikes – often before they show up in your campaign data.
Building a quick monthly Trends check into your workflow is a simple win. It shifts you from reacting to performance to actually understanding where demand is going.
Especially now, when so much of the “AI funnel” feels like a bit of a black box, Trends is a useful way to stay grounded in real, observable behaviour.
Beyond performance itself, one thing that came through quite strongly at the summit was that how we communicate results often matters more than the results themselves.
Clients don’t usually leave overnight – it tends to be a gradual shift that starts when trust begins to slip. And more often than not, that happens in how we explain things. If we lean too much on platform language (like saying “the algorithm is exploring”), what the client actually hears is that we don’t really know what’s going on.
The takeaway here is that reporting needs to move away from platform metrics and tie much more clearly back to real business outcomes.
If your strategy is still based on the manual bids and very granular keyword segmentation, here are five things from the sessions that are worth looking at this week.
1. Why you need to be on the shortlist before the search starts
We often focus on capturing people when they’re actively researching, but what came out of the summit is that we probably need to reach them much earlier than that.
Apparently, around 86% of buyers already have a shortlist in mind before they even start their formal research. If you’re not part of that early awareness stage, the chances of winning the business are pretty slim – 93% of buyers end up choosing from that initial “day one” list.
It really shows that judging top-of-funnel activity purely on last-click ROI is quite outdated. If people don’t know who you are before they start looking, you’ve already lost the chance to work with them.
This also changes how performance should be measured. If you're only judging campaigns on last-click ROI, you're missing most of the journey.
2. Planning for a shift toward AI search
The way people find information is changing, and the traditional digital funnel is becoming harder (if not impossible) to track.
At the summit, there was a strong view that up to 50% of searches could happen via LLMs (Large Language Models) by 2028. That shifts things quite a bit. We’re moving towards what’s essentially an “invisible funnel” – more like 1-to-1 conversations happening in environments we can’t fully see or measure.
That’s where AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) comes in. If we want to stay visible in these AI-driven journeys, we need to think beyond just keywords and rankings.
The framework shared at the summit focused on five key pillars:
- Content: structured, intent-led answers rather than keyword-heavy pages
- Technology: making sure back-end structure is accessible and readable for AI
- Digital PR: building authority and trust signals that LLMs can recognise
- Partnerships: showing up across relevant ecosystems (often overlooked, but important for visibility)
- Tracking: rethinking measurement, especially with so much of this happening “in the dark”
The big shift here is that we’re no longer optimising for a funnel we can clearly see. If your brand isn’t part of those early, AI-driven conversations, you may never even make it into consideration.
3. Emotional creative is still one of the strongest levers we have
One of the standout stats from the summit was that emotional campaigns are roughly 7x more effective than purely rational ones. So rather than leading with product features, the focus should really be on the “human truth” – what the customer is actually feeling, whether that’s a frustration, need, or desire.
That said, it’s not a one-and-done fix. One of the more practical takeaways was that winning ads don’t stay winners for long. Platforms tend to reward freshness, and performance can drop off much faster than expected, so having a regular creative refresh cycle is key.
To keep that pipeline going, customer reviews are a bit of a goldmine. They give you the exact language people use and highlight the real emotions behind their decisions – which makes it much easier to keep creative feeling relevant rather than repetitive.
4. Moving from random testing to structured hypotheses
We need to stop launching tests just for the sake of it. Every experiment should be backed by a proper hypothesis.
The summit recommended a simple framework: Business question → Marketing hypothesis → Experiment. This shift from "let’s see what happens" to "we believe X will happen because of Y" makes your results far more intentional and much easier to explain to stakeholders.
5. Using CRM data to see the full picture
Too many brands are making optimisation decisions based on incomplete data because they only track online actions. If a user clicks an ad but converts via a phone call or an in-person visit, that "invisible" conversion makes your campaigns look less effective than they are. Connecting your CRM to your ad platforms is the only way to close this gap. Feeding that offline data back into the system improves machine learning signals and ensures you are optimising for actual sales, not just digital footprints.
What to do next
Preparing for the shift to AI search isn’t really a long-term trend prediction anymore – it’s something that needs to be addressed now. Most teams aren’t set up for this level of automation yet, so the first step is to understand how ready you actually are. A quick AI readiness audit is a good place to start.
To make this practical, a few areas to focus on:
- Audit your data infrastructure: make sure your tracking and back-end data are clean and structured so AI systems can actually use them properly.
- Scale your creative output: you’ll need a higher volume of fresh, emotional creative to avoid fatigue and keep feeding the platforms.
- Rethink team roles: less time spent on manual execution, more focus on strategy, direction, and understanding intent.
- Start testing early: don’t wait for this to become standard – build structured tests now to understand what works before everyone else catches up.
Wondering if your current strategy is ready for the shift to AEO? Get in touch with our team for a digital strategy audit.