Over 45 IAB leaders, from Peru to Ukraine, gathered in London in November for the 2025 IAB Global Summit. New Zealand CEO Angelina Farry attended for the first time and says the experience reminded her just how connected the industry and its work now is.
The IAB Global Summit was three days of shared discussions, challenges and a chance to look at where digital advertising is heading as we plan for 2026.
As 2025 draws to a close, it’s fair to say the pace of change hasn’t slowed. If anything, it’s accelerating.
Keynote speakers included WPP founder Sir Martin Sorrell and advertising executive Rory Sutherland – their talks couldn’t have been more different in delivery, but both reinforced how fundamentally our industry is shifting.
The long term is gone
Sir Martin’s short LinkedIn bio – “Businessman” – doesn’t capture the scale of his impact. More than three decades ago he transformed a British wire-basket manufacturer into WPP, one of the world’s largest advertising and marketing groups.
After leaving WPP he founded S4Capital, a purely digital business designed for the era we’re now in – one defined by speed, data, and technology-driven creativity.
His IAB Global Summit message was clear – short-termism is now the defining characteristic of business. In his words, the long term is gone. We’re operating in shorter cycles, with expectations for faster results and faster outputs. AI is central to that shift and Sir Martin highlighted five areas where he’s seeing momentum:
- Visualisation and copywriting moving to higher-volume, lower-cost AI workflows
- Algorithmic adoption in media planning and buying
- Platform share realignments
- Industry-wide efficiency gains
- The democratisation of knowledge as organisations flatten and decision-making speeds up
He shared an example of S4Capital producing creative assets for General Motors for £500 in four weeks – work that previously would have cost around £2.5m and taken months.
Costs and timeframes are compressing at a rate that would have sounded impossible even five years ago. At the same time, the demand for personalisation and the sheer number of assets needed to deliver it, is only increasing.
Defining the next decade of digital media
Keeping pace with these changes is the role of the IAB Tech Lab, led by CEO Anthony Katsur. The Tech Lab is essentially the backbone of the digital advertising ecosystem – setting the global standards and infrastructure the industry relies on. Katsur’s view echoed Sir Martin’s: the last four years have been the most accelerated in the industry’s history.
Tech Lab’s focus now is on developing open, privacy-safe frameworks that can support AI-driven buying, selling, verifying and valuing of media. The shift to AI isn’t something happening later – it’s actively reshaping the underlying infrastructure of digital advertising right now, and the work being done at IAB Tech Lab will define the next decade of how digital media operates.
Unsurprisingly, AI surfaced repeatedly. IAB Canada president Sonia Carreno presented a deep dive into how AI is transforming not just creative workflows but the very infrastructure of advertising.
Every market is experimenting, but the game-changing shifts are happening in the underlying systems. The global IAB network is now collectively building the standards that will define the next era of AI-powered advertising.
Measuring what matters
Retail media was another major theme and IAB Europe industry development & insights director Marie-Clare Puffett took us through its rapid global growth.
Retail media is maturing quickly into long-term partnerships and becoming a significant line item in marketing budgets. Yet despite its momentum, 53% of buy-side stakeholders cite lack of standardisation as a barrier to investment. This is something the global IAB network will be working together to address.
New and improved measurement standards, definitions, and training will make this space more transparent and easier to buy.
Measurement more broadly also featured strongly. IAB US VP measurement, addressability & data centre Angelina Eng outlined the global fragmentation of platform silos, and the continued absence of a trusted cross-media currency.
The goal for 2026 is to build shared frameworks and best practices that local markets can adapt, delivering clearer, more practical guidance for advertisers who simply want to measure what matters.
An energising experience
As the IAB Global Summit wrapped up, what stayed with me was the strength of global alignment – not in a generic “industry coming together” sense, but in a tangible, operational way.
Privacy, measurement, sustainability, AI governance, commerce media frameworks – none of these can be solved in isolation. The work happening globally through IAB isn’t theoretical; it’s foundational.
For me, as a first-time attendee, the experience was energising. Being in a room with such a diverse mix of markets, each with its own realities, constraints and innovations, was a powerful reminder that while New Zealand is a small market, we’re part of a much bigger system.
And we have a seat at the table shaping what comes next.
Here’s to taking those insights and that momentum into 2026 and continuing to champion Aotearoa’s digital advertising industry with the support of a truly global community behind us.
The post Global collaboration matters more than ever: 2025 IAB Summit appeared first on stoppress.co.nz.
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