Another busy and successful Advertising Week Europe, filled with plenty of industry conversations around how brands can cut through the noise, build trust, gain attention and lots of discussions around CTV. Even though technology has advanced, people haven’t changed nearly as much. Audiences are still driven by the same core needs: belonging, trust, shared identity and belief. But what has shifted is their expectation of brands.
One theme cuts through consistently: the brands that will define the next era are not those that do the most, but those that are the clearest. Clarity of purpose, strength of storytelling and the discipline to build from solid foundations are emerging as the real differentiators
Industry leaders share their takeaways from this year’s Advertising Week Europe below.
Ben Cleaver, Founder & Strategy Partner at BigSmall
Advertising Week Europe was full of talk about change. But the real story is that very little has changed where it matters. People haven’t suddenly developed new needs because the tools have evolved. We still look for the same things: belonging, belief, shared identity and trust. Call it fandom, call it purpose, call it whatever the latest language is – but it’s the same human truth. What has changed is our tolerance for brands that haven’t done the work.
The attention game is breaking. More content, more channels, more spend and all chasing attention that has to be earned, not bought. The firehose approach doesn’t just fail; it exposes a lack of clarity at the centre. The brands that cut through aren’t the loudest, they’re the clearest. They know what they stand for and they behave accordingly. They create things people want to be part of, not just things to be seen.
So, while the industry looks forward for answers, the real advantage sits somewhere more uncomfortable: doing the foundational work most are still trying to skip. Clarity isn’t a layer. It’s the job.
Carl Huber D’Cruz, Sales Director, Disney Advertising EMEA
Clear themes have emerged from Advertising Week Europe this year around CTV; which is that we all need to lean into deeper collaboration, prioritise stronger storytelling, and continue finding smart ways to put brands in front of consumers with thought and precision.
Addressable advertising continues to be at the forefront of conversations; we know that advertisers are focused on reaching the right viewer, at the right time, in the right environment, and CTV in particular offers a lot of opportunity to build collaborative ways of achieving this. Transparent, accurate and consistent campaign measurement also plays an active role, whether that’s at granular level like the insights offered by Audience Project, or at national level like BARB; and we need to keep finding ways to build an aligned view so that brands can make informed planning decisions.
But, as those who attended our panel session which gave a glimpse of shows coming up on Disney+ know, strong, relevant and authentic storytelling is absolutely crucial.
Streaming offers a trusted, brand-safe environment reaching an engaged audience. It will be those who recognise the importance of integrating programmatic and measurement around premium storytelling who will define the next era of advertising.
Cesare Mattia Eternini, Senior Director, Performance EMEA & LATAM, Teads
At Advertising Week Europe 2026, one thing was clear: the industry is moving from a scale and efficiency game to a value game.
Yes, first-party data and retail environments are still super powerful, but current systems are complex and fragmented. With only 1 in 4 product choices fixed in consumers’ minds, there are huge opportunities for brands, but to access these, they need to stop viewing discovery as a nice-to-have, and start viewing it as a core part of their marketing approach.
CTV stood out as a key discovery method for longer-term incremental growth. As nearly 45% of total TV consumption is streaming, it’s no wonder why. CTV is evolving into a primary discovery engine, bridging the gap between high-impact brand exposure on the big screen and tangible, lower-funnel performance metrics.
Sam Jones, Brand and Marketing Director at Joint
One of the most memorable moments at Advertising Week Europe happened right in the middle of a panel, when an audience member stood up to thank Ian Russell. It came right after Ian spoke about his daughter, Molly, who sadly took her life after being exposed to a relentless stream of self harm content online – much of it actively pushed to her by algorithms supposedly designed to “connect” us. Channel 4’s Molly vs The Machines explores this and lays bare the scale of the harmful content she was served. Since then, Ian has co-founded the Molly Rose Foundation, aiming to make the online world safer for young people.
What we still call “social media” now behaves more like a high-performance advertising engine, engineered for attention, driven by profit, and allowed to grow without any oversight. We’re already regulating what children are exposed to on TV, in films and in public spaces without calling it censorship. Yet the internet remains an exception.
Real progress will need sustained pressure, stronger rules, true accountability and advertisers withdrawing from environments that can’t meet basic standards of safety.”
