Asia Advertising Trend Predictions 2026: Human Realness Vs AI Infiltration
We can’t talk about trends and predictions these days without mentioning AI. It has been a dominant topic for the past couple of years. But while some are excited by what this means for advertising and the opportunities it opens up, others are beginning to tire of its inauthentic feel.
In Asia, many growing trends seem to stem from these two opposing camps, as the following experts identify…
Backlash Against “Algorithmic Sameness”
Belynda Sim, head of strategy at GUT Asia
In the age of AI, filters and curation, showing your flaws, humanity, transparency, awkwardness have become new forms of credibility. Whether it’s the rise of micro-communities, the shift toward unfiltered self-expression, or the demand for brands to play a more meaningful role in everyday life, what we see in the work is really a reflection of the lives behind the screens.
And that’s the point: if brands want to matter in Asia today, we can’t just make ads, we need to make acts. People aren’t looking for another polished message – they’re looking for proof. Proof you understand them. Proof you add value. Proof you show up in the moments that actually matter.
The brands that win aren’t the ones who speak the loudest, but the ones who show up differently in their lives and participate with intention: fuel communities, unlock creativity, support passions, and contribute to culture rather than borrow from it. In Asia, relevance isn’t claimed – it’s earned through actions that resonate.
Naiyen Wang, managing director, Southeast Asia at We Are Social
It’s becoming clear that as the volume of AI-generated content pours across our digital platforms, 2026 is shaping up to be a cultural turning point. We’re seeing a renewed, palpable emphasis on genuine human connection and intimacy. This counter-movement is placing a significant premium on authenticity, a signal that audience preferences are undergoing a major shift.
They are tired of the algorithmic sameness and the low-effort AI outputs often dubbed ‘slop’. The more automated our feeds become, the more intensely consumers demand content that carries the warmth, the texture, and the emotional immediacy only real human narratives can provide.
I believe this behavioural shift will accelerate the move away from large platforms toward smaller, highly engaged digital communities across SEA. These spaces allow for sharing rooted in local humour, cultural nuance, and mutual support, all outside the distorting influence of algorithmic amplification.
Winning attention now demands a strategic pivot toward local human truths: celebrating real people, genuinely prioritising community voices, enabling meaningful one-to-one interactions, and resisting the urge to automate everything.
Huiwen Tow, head of strategy at VIRTUE Asia
In 2026, advertising in Asia will be reshaped by a deeper cultural shift: audiences aren’t asking brands to be truer versions of themselves – they’re demanding more original ones.
Modern masculinity in Asia is entering its most transformative chapter. Men are rewriting the script on vulnerability, ambition, and identity, rejecting the binary of stoic or soft. For brands, this opens a creative frontier: stories that don’t just represent men, but reveal the inner negotiations that define manhood today.
The era of ‘authentic and relatable’ has peaked. Consumers don’t need brands to mirror life – they need them to expand it. Brands that lean into the weird and wonderful chaos that defines Asia can create work that feels alive, surprising, and distinctly regional.
As attention becomes unbuyable, brands must earn it like studios do: through story worlds, IP, and formats people actively seek.
In 2026, the brief is clear: shape culture, don’t just chase it.
Syahriza Badron, managing director, FCB SHOUT
We hyped AI into the stratosphere. Now audiences expect world-class. When brands take shortcuts, Malaysian netizens roast them instantly. Uniqlo and Oriental Coffee proved that quality earns love while lazy AI earns memes. First came fascination. Now it is accountability.
We trust humans, not institutions. It is the age of self-made thinkers who speak with honesty and scars. In Malaysia, Christy Ng embodies this energy. Smart yet relatable. Successful yet vulnerable. Culture wants leaders who feel real.
Gen z buys the vibe, not the logo. Local brands that feel authentic and personality driven are winning shelf space and social hype – Zus Coffee, Anaabu, Dododots, Futuremade Studio (there are a lot more). Made in Malaysia is no longer second tier. It is the culture.
Mary Lee, managing director and Yiwen Li, head of experience and service design at VML & Ogilvy Japan
Japan’s market requires navigational precision to address its duality: individually expressive yet socially regulated, emotionally driven yet risk-averse. For global brands, this means success will not come from a bold, singular move but from a series of precise, culturally attuned small wins across its customer journey. Japan’s younger consumers in particular are emotionally motivated – shaped by economic anxiety, cautious optimism, and preference for stability over grand ambition.
AI can support faster learning, but the real competitive edge lies in developing a human-level sensitivity to these nuanced motivations serviced across real human, retail and digital touchpoints.
Japan’s loyalty-driven culture will push more brands to develop their own form of brand currency – points, micro-benefits, and exchange mechanisms embedded into daily life. The winning approach will not be building a large, all-encompassing ecosystem but creating an optimal, lightweight strategy that plugs into existing high-access environments such as LINE (Japan native social media platform). The forecast is about integration, interoperability, and designing value flows that meet consumers where they already are.
AI Is No Longer “Optional”
Tu-Ngan Pham, strategist at Happiness Saigon
By the end of 2025, Vietnam’s creative industry reached a turning point. AI moved beyond experimentation and into execution. Brands rolled out full campaigns using generative tools. Production timelines shrank. AI visuals often outperformed traditional assets. Some agencies began developing custom AI models trained on individual clients, capable of understanding tone, voice, and context. What started as a tool quickly became a collaborator.
At the same time, a wave of AI-driven scams swept through the country. From fake voices to deepfaked authority figures, the public saw how convincingly AI could mimic truth. This created a subtle but growing tension. The more AI shows up in communications, the more consumers question what they are seeing.
Looking ahead to 2026, AI will no longer be optional in the creative process. It will be embedded. The question is no longer if we use it, but how. The real opportunity lies in making AI work in service of sharper thinking, not replacing it. The creative direction, the gut instinct, the emotional timing of an idea – those still belong to people. In the year ahead, the most compelling work will come not from choosing between AI and human creativity, but from knowing where one ends and the other must take over.
Sewon Lillian Min, senior brand strategist at Cheil Korea
While the global narrative warns of AI fatigue, ethical debates, and a potential retreat to analog, the signal from South Korea (a global testbed for digital trends) suggests a different reality. Here, we aren't witnessing a rejection of AI, but a rapid evolution in how we relate to and live alongside it.
In Korea, AI has transcended its role as a mere productivity tool to become a medium for emotional expression. Korean consumers are already bypassing the ‘tech’ aspect to focus on the feeling. We see this in the recent viral ‘AI First Snow’ camera filter trend, where users create selfies to curate a romanticised holiday mood, leveraging algorithms for the vibe rather than realism. Similarly, the surge in AI fortune-telling services like ‘AI Saju’ highlights a shift where technology is used for psychological comfort rather than just information.
This signals the era of ‘Synthetic Intimacy’, where the novelty of AI has faded and consumers now view it as a familiar canvas for expressing their own identity. The most successful brands in 2026 won’t just use AI to generate ads for efficiency. Instead, they will empower consumers to use AI as a tool to tell their own stories, blending high-tech tools with high-touch emotions.
Kevin Jin, CCO at BBDO Shanghai
In 2026, one of the biggest debates is whether we become slaves to AI or masters of it. As AI grows more capable, it will be excellent at doing the ‘right’ things: being efficient, analytical, predictable, and consistently correct. For many teams, that will be a welcome boost in productivity and clarity.
But creativity has never been only about doing the right thing. It’s often about doing the ‘wrong’ thing in the right way, taking a risk, following an instinct that doesn’t quite add up, or making a mistake that unexpectedly leads somewhere new. Those are the moments where human imagination still matters most.
So perhaps the real path forward is not choosing one side or the other, but strengthening both. Let AI become more powerful at what it does best, and at the same time push ourselves to become more powerful in the ways AI can’t: dreaming, doubting, questioning, and daring to try what might not work. That balance will shape the creative landscape next year.
Kentaro Kimura, corporate officer and international chief creative officer at Hakuhodo
Undoubtedly AI will significantly accelerate the evolution of marketing and creative output in 2026. I see three trends coming out of this evolution:
1. AI for Emotions
While AI will continue advancing optimisation, automation, and efficiency in measurable and reproducible realms, I believe that in 2026 it will also be creating emotionally resonant creative content in unmeasurable and non-reproducible realms.
2. Wishes for Change
AI will make it easier to fulfill people’s desires to know, see, buy, and experience things. The deep aspirations we hold in our hearts about how we would like the world to be can only originate from human beings. I believe that ideas that embody these deep, long-lasting human wishes will spark truly game-changing actions.
3. Human-Driven Craft
AI will dramatically increase the speed and quality of craft. But it will still be craft driven by humans’ crazy passions and efforts that genuinely touches people’s hearts.
Guill Rodas, chief technology officer, APAC at R/GA
Marketing stops being purely about content creation and starts being about ‘spatial interaction’. If the stories of 2024 and 2025 were about AI's ultimate output being infinite digital content, the story of 2026 is about a necessary pivot: AI entering the physical world. Why? Because human attention on the screen has become the most scarce resource. The brands that win will move the battleground, deploying embodied intelligence that meets the customer in context, in the real world, not just on the feed.
In 2026, we will see AI-trained not just on internet data (text and images), but crucially, on physics and space. This allows the AI to understand spatial relationships and how the real world operates, moving it from a generator to an architect.
Why does it matter for brands? To combat saturation, brands must move to the physical realm, creating intelligent systems that deliver utility. This means active, contextual utility:
1. Hyper-realistic AR: Context-aware experiences where virtual objects obey physical laws. Expect systems that place virtual products into your actual living room, guiding you toward a physical purchase.
2. Embodied AI in Retail: We are moving beyond the chatbot. Expect kiosks and robotic assistants that can see, understand the environment (like shelf stock), and physically interact with customers. This signals the shift from a digital 'help desk' to a proactive, physical 'service agent’.
Adam Tunikowski, CEO and co-founder at Juice
In 2026, I expect the bar for VFX in advertising to get a lot tougher across APAC, something I’m already witnessing from Singapore, where we operate together with Dandelion Studios.
The ‘mushy middle’ of glossy-but-forgettable work will shrink: you either lean into truly top-tier cinematic hero films, those flagship brand stories, or into ultra-efficient systems for fast-turn versioning, localisation and clean-up. You can already feel it at the agency level: as the big networks come under pressure, scopes get leaner, more project-based and more risk is pushed down the production chain to VFX and post partners.
AI won’t be a selling point anymore, it’ll just be assumed, and we’ll be judged on how mature and safe our stack is. Against India/China/SEA pricing, Singapore’s real edge will be reliability: predictable delivery, data discipline, and integration with global cloud and AI workflows.
Tim Green, chief creative officer, Asia Pacific at Edelman
In 2026, marketing will be defined by the further convergence of global ideas and hyperlocal execution, thanks to the continued proliferation of AI and creator marketing.
First, AI enables brands to think and act locally at speed. Where once campaigns were scaled regionally, AI now allows market-centric strategies with unprecedented precision. Brands like Unilever can deploy hyperlocal resonance at scale, leveraging real-time intelligence and cultural nuance.
Second, creators are redefining brand innovation. The rise of co-creation with creators allows brands to connect more effectively with communities at the grassroots of culture. Our recent work for Mongolia’s national branding film exemplifies this: unleashing creators to tell authentic stories from their unique areas of creation, driving genuine engagement and innovation.
In 2026, the impact of AI and creators will empower brands to think and act both globally and locally, unlocking even greater possibilities for relevant and meaningful connection.
Matt Shoult, CEO and founder at Maker Lab
AI has faced plenty of criticism this year, with many arguing it has not delivered on the hype. I take a different view. The technology is advancing at speed, organisations are experimenting with real purpose, and teams are learning to reshape how they work. The brands making the biggest leaps are tightening operations, rethinking workflows and building the capability to respond to audiences in the moment.
Another trend that will accelerate in 2026 is the shift towards channel agnostic creative systems. With CTV, streaming, social search and short form video pulling attention in different directions, relying on a few seasonal moments no longer works. Marketers need ideas that travel, teams that produce at pace and operating models that scale with demand and shift with behaviour.
In APAC, in-housing will continue to grow. It is becoming far easier and more cost effective to run an embedded marketing function with the right blend of talent, technology and partnership. More regional marketers are adopting hybrid setups: part FTE and part agency in-housed, all connected under one workflow and one set of measures that keep multi-channel work coordinated.
Together, these shifts point to a 2026 where successful brands combine smarter operations with close-to-business teams to deliver faster, more adaptive and more accountable marketing.
Krishna Iyer, director – marketing at MullenLowe Lintas Group India
I think we are heading for a restructuring of the industry and the rise of independents. The landmark Omnicom–Interpublic merger created the largest and most powerful network globally, sparking senior exits and reshuffles that will inevitably fuel a renaissance of independent, specialist agencies.
Retail media will keep eating budgets, regional content will drive real growth, and first-party data will become every marketer’s core asset. The smartest brands will blend the scale of mega-networks with the agility of independents, and replace promises with transparent dashboards, measurable change and impact woven into the product.
AI will give human imagination greater lift, yes, but it will also shine a brighter light on how companies operate – from how materials are sourced to what impact products have on the planet. Audiences are tired of grand declarations around purpose. They want brands to actually deliver.
In 2026 and beyond, the standouts in Asia will have to share clear, consistent updates on their environmental, social, and community work. It should be backed by transparency; facts and metrics that people can check and verify. Tech is transforming marketing, and it will continue to do so. However, truth always prevails and will be a differentiator.
