Artificial intelligence isn’t just another technology trend; it has the potential to fundamentally shift how businesses operate. The advantages are increasingly evident. The technology is being used to predict and prevent fraud, cybersecurity threats and operational disruptions before they occur, while also automating repetitive tasks and shortening development cycles, optimizing supply chains, enhancing customer experiences, accelerating product innovation and improving decision-making with real-time analytics. It’s clear AI is redefining the way companies create value.
This is particularly true for the TV advertising industry. TV advertising is a vast economy that includes buyers, sellers, creatives, distributors, tech companies and more—and AI is touching every corner of it. While it’s still in early stages, AI’s influence on TV advertising will be profound, from ad creation to transaction, optimization and measurement.
Sure, there’s a lot of hype and marketing spin. But some true AI-driven advances are already starting to change TV advertising in a fundamental way that will create lasting value by making campaigns smarter, measurement more accountable and the entire ecosystem more efficient—for good.
One way or another, TV, whether streaming or traditional, touches most of our lives. So if you’re an advertiser wondering what TV can do for you, or simply a viewer wanting to learn a bit more about why those ads are appearing on your screen, this is what you’ll want to know in 2026.
Here are four ways AI is changing TV advertising:
- Democratizing TV Advertising: AI is accelerating the expansion of TV advertising beyond the top 500 brands that Big Media has traditionally relied upon. Businesses that typically rely solely on search and social video advertising can more easily get in on the action. It’s about simplifying access—even for major live sports and tentpole events—through tools like Comcast’s Universal Ads, which give smaller advertisers a seat at the table. And creative, once a cost-restrictive barrier for smaller brands, is no longer an obstacle. AI-generated creative now makes producing TV commercials affordable and simple for new entrants, requiring only a few clicks and a couple minutes to generate a professional-quality TV ad.
- Expanding Working Media Dollars: Part of the challenge of making TV simpler to buy is the complexity of the digital TV advertising ecosystem, which spans an unnecessarily complex supply chain—supply side platforms, demand side platforms, ad networks, ad servers and other ad tech point solutions—adding to increased hops between a marketer and its audience, and resulting in the so-called “tech tax.”
The movement toward reducing ad tech middlemen is already underway. However, agentic buying that uses AI-powered agents to automate media purchases, often through natural language commands, enables direct, automated interaction between buyers and sellers and will only accelerate this movement. Advertisers can simply state their goals, and buyer agents interpret those instructions, interacting with seller agents to execute and optimize streaming TV campaigns. While still evolving, premium video has the potential to transform buying from a fragmented process into a seamless, AI-driven system that scales efficiently, puts more money against actual media and unlocks new opportunities for advertisers and publishers alike.
- Proving TV’s Performance: As traditional TV and streaming converge, measurement has severely lagged. Businesses need to move past the legacy models designed for a bygone era and enable consistent impression counting across platforms—proving outcomes matter most. Always-on full-funnel attribution and incrementality measurement will better demonstrate the impact of upper- and mid-funnel activity, revealing the significant role TV plays in driving marketing outcomes, including purchases.A more holistic measurement approach will strengthen confidence in TV’s effectiveness as a full-funnel performance vehicle, and as verification grows, it will increase its value in the media mix. In 2026, legacy single-currency models will be challenged as new-to-TV advertisers drive adoption of third-party incrementality tools. This will better level the measurement playing field with tech platforms that mark their own homework, improving transparency and enabling smarter spend decisions.
- Accelerating Innovation and Differentiation: In an AI-driven world, some worry that TV’s value proposition could become commoditized. But that outcome is unlikely if marketers continue to value real, engaged and authenticated audiences anchored by high-quality, culturally relevant content, like live sports and global events. TV delivers all of this against the backdrop of increasingly opaque alternatives. As a result, media companies will lean into AI that accelerates innovation while developing uniquely differentiated capabilities that ride on top of their content advantage.
To achieve this, media companies, advertisers and agencies should select technology partners that offer open architecture and seamless integration without requiring costly custom development. Comcast’s FreeWheel exemplifies this approach, combining core ad-serving capabilities with advanced AI for contextual and audience targeting, optimization and outcome delivery. And importantly, it also provides a broad set of AI-driven connectors, enabling clients to integrate their owned and developed tools, as well as third-party solutions, directly into the platform. Ultimately, this delivers greater flexibility for advertisers, streamlined workflows for agencies and scalable innovation and ownership of unique differentiation for media companies, driving better performance and faster growth.
Looking ahead
In 2026, AI will be a tailwind, helping TV and streaming media companies to close the gap with Big Tech by simplifying the buying experience and proving TV’s full-funnel performance value. Essentially, AI will help combine TV’s core product value—engagement, brand safety and trust—with digital and social-like capabilities, powering intuitive self-serve tools, campaign setup and optimization and offerings not previously seen in TV advertising. It’s a goal the industry has been moving toward, and it’s finally within striking distance.
Getting AI right isn’t about chasing headlines or short-term wins; it’s about building lasting value. When applied thoughtfully with the advertiser’s goals at the center, AI will make TV advertising smarter, more relevant and more accountable. Done well, it won’t just transform campaigns—it will strengthen the entire ecosystem, creating efficiency, transparency and growth that benefits everyone—including viewers.
For more information about how Comcast Advertising is building the future of TV advertising, contact us.
This content has been modified from the original article published here on WSJ.com.
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