7 Big Advertising Announcements from CES 2026
In case you couldn’t make it to Las Vegas this year for the sixth annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES), we’ve picked out some of the most interesting announcements that are pertinent to the ad industry.
Several holding companies and agency networks took to the event’s stages to announce their new or updated AI platforms, with agentic AI emerging as an industry focus. Meanwhile Reddit is trying to simplify ad buying on its platform, and Disney has upgraded its advertising ecosystem for the new year.
Check out the highlights below.
Stagwell Debuted ‘The Machine’ – an Agentic Operating System, Built by Code and Theory
‘The Machine’ OS unifies workflows and uses AI agents to enhance the data systems and tools marketers already use, including Figma, Slack, Teams, Adobe, and performance dashboards. Stagwell's agencies, products and data – every brief, creative asset and media plan – feeds ‘The Machine’, which learns, adapts and compounds. Code and Theory clients are already adopting the early model, with enterprise deployment coming in Q1 2026.
Stagwell Also Launched SPORT BEACH as Its Own Business Unit
SPORT BEACH will be led by CEO Beth Sidhu while she continues her role as Stagwell's chief brand and communications officer until a successor is officially named. SPORT BEACH will help brands and athletes engage through signature events, convening and facilitating diverse leaders to drive meaningful business outcomes, and launching an always-on editorial platform at the intersection of sport, business, culture, technology and creativity.
Havas Unveiled AVA – Its Global LLM Portal
AVA puts safety and compliance first, aiming to provide secure, centralised access to the world’s most advanced AI models – including GPT-5, Claude Opus 4.5, and Gemini 3 – and trusted access to other insights, agents, and proprietary intelligence. AVA will begin rolling out in Spring 2026, progressively extending capabilities across Havas teams and client partnerships worldwide.
Omnicom Introduced the New Omni – its Upgraded AI-Driven Marketing Intelligence Platform
The next generation of Omni integrates Omnicom’s Connected Capabilities – its integrated data, technology, talent and expanded agentic AI framework – with recently acquired Interpublic resources, including Acxiom, Flywheel Commerce Cloud and Interact. It brings together: the world’s most comprehensive identity and data infrastructure; the world’s largest media and commerce buying power; an end-to-end creative and content production infrastructure; and autonomous agent systems across creativity, media, commerce and measurement.
WPP Launched Agent Hub on WPP Open – a Central Library of Advanced AI Agents
Agent Hub is an internal app store codifying decades of proprietary data, strategic capabilities and deep institutional best practice into advanced AI agents. It launches with a curated set of ‘Super Agents’, arming clients and the workforce with WPP-verified approaches to work across any brief. The initial agents include: The Brand Analytics Agent, The Behavioural Science Agent, The Analogies Agent, and the Creative Brain, “an ideation sparring partner”.
Reddit Launches Automated ‘Max Campaigns’ to Simplify Ad Buying and Surface Deeper Audience Insights
Now available in beta for select advertisers running traffic and conversion campaigns, Max campaigns automate key parts of campaign management, including targeting, creative selection, placements and budget allocation. The aim is to improve performance while reducing the manual workload for advertisers, without removing strategic control. Alongside automation, Max campaigns includes optional creative tools intended to speed up execution. These include headline suggestions informed by trending Reddit language, automatic thumbnail generation, and upcoming AI-based video cropping to help repurpose assets from other platforms.
Disney Revealed Advertising Ecosystem Updates
Disney announced several advancements to turn insights into impact for advertisers, including a new video generation tool designed for advertising which allows brands to create CTV-ready commercials using existing brand assets and guidelines. Executives also discussed a new AI-powered internal planning tool, and the expansion of its connected measurement tool, ‘Disney Compass’, into the ‘Disney Compass Brand Portal’, as well as its new ‘Disney Advertising Brand Impact Metric’. The brand also revealed it’s bringing vertical video to Disney+ in the US this year.
