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Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast
The Great BTN Bake (Take) Off — Digital Trends for 2026: Agentic Ad Buying and the Video Podcast Winners | Behind the Numbers
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Foreign.
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It's Monday, January 5th. Yuri, Ross and listeners, welcome in to behind the Numbers new marketer video podcast. I'm Marcus and joining me for today's conversation we have two gentlemen. One of them is our principal analyst heading up our media, advertising and technology desks. Living in New Jersey, it's Yuri Wormser.
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C
Hey Marcus, how are you?
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And we have our senior analyst covering everything from distra advertising and media. Living just outside of New York City, it's Ross Benish.
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Hey Marcus.
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Hey fella. Today's fact. So you know when you're on a plane and you're coming into land and you see that kind of flat continuous layer of clouds below you? The that I recently learned is because most weather is limited by a boundary in the atmosphere called the tropopause. Have you guys heard of this?
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I have not.
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Yuri has. I knew as soon as I was writing this I was like should just ask Yuri for a small summary about what this is. But it exists because air doesn't mix easily across it. The tropopause helps separate weather below from the climate or the ozone processes above. And the tropopause acts as kind of a lid preventing most clouds and storms from from rising higher. At the tropopause, the temperature pattern changes and the air becomes more stable, which is why a lot of commercial aircrafts often fly near this level to stay out of most weather. And turbulence also just looks beautiful. If you guys have been in it and seen the sun setting, that's always a pretty amazing shot. Anyway, today's real topic, the great behind the numbers bake off takeoff digital trends to watch in 2026. All right, in today's episode are bakers or takers because they're giving takes. Very clever. We'll be cooking up some top trends to watch in 2026. Three rounds. Signature take is number one, the how it would technically play out challenge. Number two. Number three, the show stopping argument. Let's meet the contestants predictions. Yuri, what will you be cooking up for us today?
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I'm predicting today standards around advertising agents are going to take off in 2026, leading to a real revolution in advertising.
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Okay. And Ross, what will you be baking for us?
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That the surge in video podcast is going to benefit YouTube the most.
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All right, we start with round one and is of course signature take. Our chefs will have one minute to explain the premise of their trend. Now we flick back to Yuris for the first one he said new standards will unlock agentic ad buying and selling. Yuri, tell us a bit about this one.
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C
Agents are the buzz of the marketing world, I think mostly because of the e commerce agents that are going to automate or trying to automate shopping. There's a parallel effort going on to automate ad buying and selling using agents. And now Programmatic already does that. But this would take the human mostly out of the loop. It would still be. People would still be there for strategy, for approving adjustments, but a lot of the instantaneous optimization would be done by agents. New standards are required for that. And I think as they come online, we're going to see that type of buying and selling and buying take off.
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B
Ross, you are going to be making for us a prediction that YouTube will benefit the most from the video podcast surge. Tell us more.
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Well, there's a lot of effort being put into video podcasts such as the one that you may be watching right now on YouTube. But the all the initiatives that Spotify and others are going to do I don't think are going to add up to anywhere close to the amount of time spent YouTube is going to get in this area. You know, YouTube is already a juggernaut and if more investment is coming into this niche, it's going to serve their interest the most.
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All right, let's move straight to round two, gents, which is the how it will technically play out challenge. Our chefs will explain in more detail how they expect the trend to manifest throughout the year. Yuri, we'll go back to yours. New new standards will unlock agentic ad buying and selling. And in this prediction, and these two predictions are part of our Digital Trends in 2026 report, there's a bunch of other trends in there, but these are two of them. And in that, Yuri, you, you write that in digital ad buying and selling, the challenge is amplified by the variety of data sources for identity, being information and creative, or with their own APIs and schemas for structuring data and instructions. And so how do you see this trend playing out throughout 2026?
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C
Well, basically the standards that I'm talking about provide a common language for agents to talk to each other. So part of that is structuring the data itself in these different sources. And part of it is unifying, creating kind of a unified API so they can talk directly to each other. So different standards are doing different parts of standard are addressing different parts of the ecosystem. IAB Tech Lab has a standard around buying and selling within the programmatic landscape called artf, which is basically just agentic real time buying framework. So that's one. And another big one is ad cp, which is one that's really trying to create direct links between ad sellers, publishers and ad buyers brands. And since I wrote this actually a, a, an industry group is formed called Agentic Advertising that, that is going to overlook that ad cp. So those, all these standards, it's a bunch of, it's an Alphabet soup but basically they're creating a common language for these agents to talk to each other. I think the more transformational one is at CP since it doesn't just work within the programmatic landscape. The open programmatic landscape could work all throughout the ecosystem. So that one I think is, is the one that is probably going to get going to get the most resistance but also the most long term uptake because it really makes, it can make a huge difference.
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A
You know, creating a standard is like one thing, but getting mass adoption is another. So how do you feel that advertisers are going to go, go about this? Because you know, even if a standard's created doesn't mean that most of them are, are going to consistently use it.
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C
Yeah, it's a good question. There's, there's, there's a fair amount of incentive around the supply side, especially the supply side dealing with premium publishers to get a standard for that direct buying and selling. The, the demand side I think has a little bit less incentive. But, but there are, you know, if, if they can adapt, there are, there are also incentives for that part of the program for the, the landscape. So I can see the, the ad tech world being really incent, incentivized to, to move forward. I think the bigger question is around the big walled gardens where most advertising is transacting now. They have their own standards for, built for themselves and their own platforms. And whether or not that there's, whether or not they want to buy into these standards is an open question. I think in the long run it'll benefit them, but I think they're going to be holdouts.
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All right, let's move over to your prediction, Ross. You're talking about video, podcast and YouTube benefiting the most in 2026. Talk us through, Talk us through. Kind of what's, what's driving.
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Yes. Also we actually have a forecast for podcast viewers, which sounds like a weird term, but that's what they are. And YouTube's going to have more than double the amount of podcast viewers than its closest rival in the US which is Spotify. And what the challenge for Spotify or any of these other services that are trying to do it is that they're used, their, their customers are used to Just the audio part. You know, if you, if you open up Spotify or Pandora, iHeartMedia, you're used to listening. If you're opening up YouTube, you're already habituated to watching video on YouTube. That's the most popular use case for YouTube. So it's like more of a natural conduit. And YouTube didn't have to put in a lot of effort to really build a base for podcast watchers. They kind of just stumbled into it because podcast creators were already uploading this stuff there without YouTube having to like put in an initiative. Whereas, you know, the, the audio companies have to like launch new products and market them and like talk to creators about making video for them. It's, it's a lot more effort that they have to put than with YouTube. It's like it just kind of naturally comes into their system. And as more creators do video, you know, YouTube's just going to be like a default place that they're gonna plop it in, even if it's not exclusively there.
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C
Ross I mean, I like this, this trend a lot. And I wonder how much of a role Google's advantage as an ad platform will help them as well.
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That's a good question. I certainly think it helps them quite a bit because they're the largest ad seller really that there is. And a lot of these creators are already used to doing sponsored stuff with YouTube or the revenue they get from AdSense. I think it's a more plug and play than it is learning how to work in video advertisements for another platform.
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You mentioned that YouTube is twice as many people watching podcasts than Spotify, its closest competitor. And that gap widening a little bit as well, like continuing to maintain and even getting a little bit bigger into the future. So Spotify not really able to, to catch up at the moment. What's interesting is how people consume these types of media because we got some data from Acast you can see on the screen right now, from November of last year, most podcast listeners watch video podcasts at least some of the time. And as you can see, mostly 40%, most people mostly listen, sometimes watch, 27% listen and watch equally, and then 12% mostly watch, but sometimes listen. That leaves 17% of people who watch video podcasts only and 5% who listen only. But if you total up all of those different answers, that said, I watched at least a bit of video, the sometimes video, the equally video, or the mostly video, it's about 80% of people. So it's not something that people are kind of doing sometimes. It's something that people are doing a lot. And, and it seems like podcast creators, podcast platforms, podcast advertisers all having to adjust to this trend.
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Well, there's, you know, the video streaming services are also just looking for cheap content. So like Netflix and Samsung TV plus are putting some podcasts on their systems because that's significantly cheaper than producing a TV show.
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Yeah. Any platforms that could really break out and challenge YouTube outside of Spotify, you.
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Know, I think TikTok would be really interesting, but the videos are tend to be short there. Like, you don't tend to have an hour long TikTok episode or even a half hour long TikTok video like, like you do with the podcast. You'd have to like chop it up and make like a series of videos about one episode or just completely redo the creative for them.
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Yeah. Micro dramas, video podcasts.
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Yeah.
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Crossover. Finally. Ross, before we move on, I liked what you were saying about kind of what will and what won't make video podcasting successful next year and how you were talking about that you've got to kind of make these engaging for audiences. You can't just, you know, film the thing and put it out there. You've got to give people a reason to watch.
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Yeah, you need something that's visually compelling. So like if you have a celebrity or someone who's well known, I think that helps you out. If you have like a really high end studio, you know, you know, some of these like, like, you know, like the Rogan show or Call Her Daddy, those have, you know, like they look like they're a talk show. Like it looks like the Colbert show or something like that. When, you know, it's like dimly lit and it's just guys in their basement probably, probably not gonna, you could probably just listen to that and not have to watch it. You know what I mean?
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Yeah, yeah. It's been something that this podcast has been asking itself. Actually. We launched video podcasting at the start of this year and we've been trying to figure out, you know, what's going to make people watch. I think part of it is people want to watch to, to see the people they're listening to if they're particularly interested and have a strong connection with the host. But that's not enough. That's kind of maybe gets you in the door, but then what else are they, are they looking at? And that's why we started, you know, throwing up charts on the screen so folks can follow along to the data as we talk about it or reference it. When they want to video podcasts, I wonder if they'll ever be watched, you know, 100%. You know, there's going to be. The question for me is how much of video podcasting will be will be viewed versus it's viewed when there's something to look at and then you put it back in your pocket.
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Oh yeah, most of the time I'm watching, I'm watching a video podcast is because YouTube shows up first in Google search, of course. And I'm like doing errands and there's a video there, but I'm not necessarily looking at it. You know, I might be in the kitchen or something. Yep, that happens with any show though. Like.
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Yeah, yeah, you know, basketball.
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You know, if, if Brunson goes to the free throw line three times in two minutes, I'm probably not going to sit down the whole time.
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Yeah, yeah.
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I added a scraggly palm tree just to boost race.
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It's visually compelling.
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All right, gents, let's move on to round three. We've called that stolen the name the show stopping argument. Our chefs will pull out their best closing arguments as to why their trend is most likely to happen. And so Yuri, we go back to yours. New standards unlocking agentic ad buying and selling. 30 seconds or so. Why is this most more likely to happen than Ross's than YouTube benefiting the most from video podcast surges?
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That is a tough challenge because I think Ross has. Has is really compelling in terms of the agentic standards. I think they just make a ton of sense to have agents buying and selling that real. What they enable is real time optimization. That's money for companies. It enables real time optimization across the whole ecosystem. You have that in some of the wall gardens now and some open web players as well. So the incentive structure is pretty big from the buyers of ads and the sellers of ads. But you also I think are enable new types of advertising, which that flexibility I think is going to be a really compelling argument.
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B
Yeah, tell us a bit more about that. That one stood out to me. One of your predictions, standards will allow for more flexibility in ad formats. What, what are you envisioning here?
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C
Yeah, I mean, think a little bit in terms of, you know, how, how answer engines can take a qualitative question and really give you a rich answer. It's a little bit the same thing with these agent agentic ad buying and selling. If you've created a language that agents can understand between what a. What a seller has to offer and what an ad buyer is looking for, you can have much more. You can have a much richer understanding of what they want and you can also create more almost customer bespoke ad formats that an ad buyer would want to buy. So it just, it gives you a much richer understanding and also a much richer ability to describe what kind of can be done.
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B
Yeah, very nice, Ross. How about for you, YouTube benefiting the most from video podcast search? Your closing argument, sir?
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Well, right now the economics are kind of encouraging. More video podcasts. There are, you know, several platforms that are incentivizing creators to make them. The CPMs can be higher with video and it's also getting easier to produce and edit video due to AI and some other tools. So. So that's going to just increase the production. Now as far as YouTube, it's quite simple. They are just a big universe that pull all sorts of things into their orbit. Video podcasts happen to be one of those things. So it's ready a place where viewer or the listener is primed to go there for video. It's really easy to upload content there. If there's a surge of the production, I think they're going to capture a large share of the audience. Mm.
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B
Very nice. And you make the point as well about how this isn't going to be necessarily. A rising tide lifts all boats. It will lift some boats and some will get dragged under.
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Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of podcasts that go back to just doing audio only or they might do a video component, but it does. It's not that successful and it's like a, a tiny portion of their total listenership.
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B
All right gents, let's move to crowning a winner. I think the winner has to be. Well, the problem is, Ross, yours is a lot more. I think the consumer facing consumers are going to care more about yours and you're. I think business is going to care more about yours.
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True.
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And so I think Yuri, I think I'm going to go with yours just because it's going to be so appealing to the business side of the world. And whilst the video podcast thing is particularly interesting, especially for someone like myself who works in the space, I think the new standards unlocking agentic ad buying and selling is going to be more significant if it plays out fast.
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Modesty worked.
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B
Congratulations, swindled. Congratulations to Yuri, today's winner of the great behind the numbers Bake off takeoff. The full report has even more digital trends if you want them. Proplus subscribers can head to eMarketer.com and search for digital trends to watch in 2026 five ways AI and video are expanding their reach. The link to the report is in the show notes. That's all we've got time for for today's episode. Thank you so much to my guests. Thank you. First to Ross. Thanks Marcus in a very close second. And thank you of course to Yuri, today's winner.
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C
Thanks Marcus.
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B
Well played sir. And thanks to the whole production crew, of course. Course, thanks to everyone for listening to behind the MD Marketer video podcast. Susie will be here on Wednesday for the Reimagining Retail show as she goes through some of our must watch retail trends of 2026 Bake off style Again, because I made.