The Interactive Advertising Bureau raised its 2026 U.S. ad-spend growth forecast to 12.3% on September 10, a 2.8-point jump from the 9.5% it projected in January, and on the same day Amazon confirmed a pilot letting advertisers extend campaigns from Amazon DSP directly into ChatGPT. Two announcements, one Thursday, and a reasonably clean picture of where the money is going.
The IAB’s survey of more than 200 brand and agency decision-makers found 63% now naming customer acquisition as their dominant media goal, up nine points since January. Brand equity rose six points to 43%. Repeat-purchase priority held roughly flat at 24%. Buyers are shifting toward the top of the funnel because they think the funnel itself is being rebuilt.
The channel breakdown reads like a scoreboard for that thesis. Social media spend is now projected to grow 16.5% (revised up from 14.6%), CTV 15.6% (from 13.8%), and commerce media 13.6% (from 12.1%). Linear TV is contracting at -1.5%. IAB CEO David Cohen credited a strong first half to the Winter Olympics and the FIFA World Cup, and warned that “there are no easy wins.”
Underneath the topline is the more consequential number: 86% of buyers say they’re already changing, or expect to change within twelve months, how they measure media because of conversational AI. Forty-five percent named connecting AI-driven journeys to traditional ones as their top measurement problem. Creator and influencer partnerships led areas of increased ad-type focus at 54%, with demo and cohort targeting close behind at 53%.
Amazon’s ChatGPT pilot lands into exactly that measurement gap. Campaigns are set up through Amazon DSP as a managed service on CPC or CPM, an Amazon spokesperson told Marketing Dive, while OpenAI controls all ad delivery and placement. Delta Vacations is among the initial U.S. brands. Per Sensor Tower, Amazon had already been the top retail advertiser on ChatGPT between April and August; CNBC pegs OpenAI’s ad business at a $1 billion annualized run rate.
Zoom out and the AI-directed share of buying is compounding fast. Madison & Wall managing director Luke Stillman told Digiday that campaign types like Meta’s Advantage+ and Google’s Performance Max will handle 12% of U.S. ad spend this year, up from 2% in 2023. Meta CFO Susan Li told analysts in July that Advantage+ alone is on a $75 billion run rate.
For a five-to-thirty-person operator watching auction prices climb in the exact channels they depend on, the two events rhyme. Budget is flowing to social, commerce media, and CTV faster than it was eight months ago, which means the cost of reaching a stranger there’s rising into Q4. And the discovery surface expanding underneath is one where, by the buyers’ own admission, almost nobody can yet prove what worked. Related coverage: ChatGPT ads reach a $1 billion run rate and AI tools now rank third in how consumers find local businesses.
The last time a measurement vacuum this wide opened inside a fast-growing paid channel was the 2007-2010 build-out of programmatic display, when the operators who moved before attribution caught up compounded advantages the late arrivals never fully closed. That window is open again, briefly.
Sources
- https://www.iab.com/news/iab-raises-2026-u-s-ad-spend-forecast/
- https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/10/amazon-chatgptads-open-ai.html
- https://digiday.com/media-buying/ad-spend-forecasts-revised-upward-as-more-ad-dollars-are-handled-by-ai-tools/
- https://www.marketingdive.com/news/amazon-pilots-ad-services-in-chatgpt-what-marketers-need-to-know/829945/
- https://searchengineland.com/amazon-pilots-chatgpt-ads-through-its-dsp-488026