Digital dominance: How will HK industry leaders navigate advertising in 2026?

Global ad spending is increasingly shifting to digital, with digital ads projected to account for 74.4% of total global advertising by 2025, up from 72.7% in 2024. This shift prompts APAC marketers to act swiftly and embrace the digital transformation.

According to the Digital 2026 Global Overview Report from We Are Social and Meltwater, the market has now reached a saturation point in digital engagement. For chief marketers worldwide, staying competitive will depend on their ability to adapt to AI-driven insights, the growing influence of social media, and the evolving digital landscape.

Despite this saturation, social media remains the fastest-growing advertising channel, with global ad spend expected to increase by 13.6% in 2025, outpacing search growth at 11.1%. Notably, social media now leads in brand awareness among the 16-to-34 age group, surpassing traditional TV. With two-thirds of the global population actively engaging on social platforms each month, marketers are confident in their audience’s online presence. The real challenge, however, is cutting through the noise to capture their attention.

As digital spending exceeds three-quarters of global budgets, the quest for relevance in 2026 will center on strategic integration across social, search, and AI ecosystems. Marketers in APAC must navigate both market saturation and inclusion challenges, skillfully blending creativity and technology to engage audiences throughout their digital journeys.

To gain further insights into the digital trends shaping the year ahead, MARKETING-INTERACTIVE reached out to industry leaders for their expectations for 2026.

Andy Wong, co-founder and account director, Digital Zoo 

The creative industry is entering another phase of transformation driven by continuous AI evolution. From production workflows to content consumption, AI is redefining how ideas are created and delivered. However, the biggest challenge ahead is the growing “attention recession", where engaging audiences amid overwhelming digital noise becomes increasingly difficult.

In 2026, strategic focus will shift toward advanced AI and research technologies. Tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush have evolved far beyond keyword analysis, now offering powerful AI-driven insights for market intelligence, brand research, and content strategy. Both companies, each generating over US$100 million in annual revenue, demonstrate how SEO platforms are becoming comprehensive marketing research ecosystems supported by predictive analytics.

Budget priorities will reflect this evolution, with approximately 15% to 20% of the annual marketing budget reallocated to AI-based initiatives, including Google AI Overviews (AIO) and generative engine optimisation (GEO) solutions. These investments aim to boost efficiency, accuracy, and audience engagement through automation and real-time insights.

The primary focus for the year will be optimising web and brand experiences for AI-powered search environments such as Google AIO, Gemini, and Perplexity, ensuring stronger visibility across the next generation of intelligent discovery platforms.

Vin Ng, general manager, EchoMaker 

The next big wave is the algorithmic takeover of discovery and intent. This means consumers bypass traditional channels (search, display ads) and rely entirely on AI feeds for information and entertainment. Our competitive response is total AI integration: using it not just for targeting but for GEO—restructuring all social and owned content to be cited as authoritative data by conversational AIs. This shift requires a move from optimising for the user's presence to optimising for the algorithm's preferences, making our data and AI infrastructure, such as the data management platform (DMP), the primary strategic asset for predicting intent and ensuring visibility.

Our core technology focus is establishing a seamless, bidirectional loop between generative AI (GenAI) and the DMP. The DMP is crucial for unifying our audience segments, but GenAI is the engine for scaling personalised execution. We will invest heavily in proprietary tools that automate the full creative cycle: from using the DMP to identify niche audience needs to generating thousands of hyper-localised social assets and ad copies instantly. This allows us to achieve "personalisation at scale" while implementing sophisticated AI governance layers, ensuring human strategists maintain brand voice and ethical standards across all automated marketing outputs.

Our 2026 budget reflects the mandatory investment in AI as capital expenditure. We are aggressively shifting funds away from manual, labour-intensive marketing operations towards data and AI infrastructure. This includes significant investment in advanced DMP functionalities to enhance predictive modelling capabilities. Specifically, funds will prioritise AI platforms for media mix optimisation, predictive analytics, and content automation (GEO tooling). The goal is to drastically reduce human-hours spent on repetitive tasks (such as reporting, segmenting, A/B testing), enabling our teams to focus solely on high-value, creative, and ethical supervision of the AI, maximising every dollar’s AI-forecasted ROI.

Our one key focus is achieving algorithmic and data-driven authority through total AI integration. This means every area of marketing—from paid social to owned content—must be executed, measured, and optimised by AI. We will ensure our DMP provides the most robust, compliant data foundation possible, which is then used by our AI models to consistently demonstrate across all digital interactions.

Jeffrey Hau, CEO, PRIZM Group

As we move into 2026, the biggest wave hitting digital and customer relationship management (CRM) is the rise of GenAI. It is suddenly possible to produce huge volumes of social content, even videos, at a cost that used to be unthinkable. This means the brands with the biggest budgets are no longer the only ones who are in the game. For me, the real question is not “How much AI can we use?”, but “How do you make yourself stand out in AI?” Think about it, just like when machinery took over production, and people started to treasure handmade goods, the psychology behind authenticity will matter even more.

On the CRM side, the mindset of consumers has shifted. With constant economic uncertainty and hyper-targeted ads, people feel more anxious and short-sighted. Young customers especially prefer rewards and experiences that make them feel good now, not a year or months later, just like saving for a down payment for housing becomes unrealistic. Loyalty programmes that break big goals into smaller, instantly gratifying milestones will resonate far more. At the same time, CRM builds can no longer take a year to plan and another year to execute. The market moves too fast. Modular, low-code CRM lets us build in an agile way and focus on delivering experiences, not just points or coupons.

Budgeting in 2026 is all about spending smart. We want investments that come with trackable KPIs, but we also need to invest in long-term capabilities. Tools will keep changing, but the team’s mindset and literacy in AI should stay with us for the long run.

My key focus next year is learning to keep up with all the new tech, but not blindly chasing every trend. Trends come and go faster than ever. We need to act fast but think slowly. And of course, we’re pushing harder on cross-border opportunities in China and across Asia. With globalised eCommerce and social platforms, there are basically no borders anymore. Even influencers cannot just focus on a single market now, the most successful ones aren’t stuck in one region, our clients shouldn’t be either.

Chris Tam, co-founder, SDMC

The next big wave in the digital industry is the integration of GenAI, automation, and hyper-personalisation across every touchpoint, transforming marketing, operations, and customer engagement.

AI-powered, automation and workflow tools will drive real-time decision-making, predictive analytics and ultra-personalised experiences, while omnichannel strategies and immersive technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) reshape digital interactions. Retail media platforms will enable direct commerce integration, turning content into instant sales opportunities. These technologies will be critical for capturing attention and driving conversions in a crowded digital landscape. 

One of our key focuses is AI and geospatial (AIGEO) - GEO is the future-forward strategy for enterprises. Unlike traditional SEO, AIGEO ensures digital content is utilised by AI systems such as Deepseek, ChatGPT and Gemini, increasing the likelihood of being cited and featured in AI-generated answers. This enhances brand visibility within AI-driven results by using semantic relevance, structured data, and continuous adaptation to evolving AI behaviours. 

For Hong Kong enterprises, adopting AIGEO means staying competitive by delivering AI-friendly, context-rich content that aligns with how GenAI processes and prioritises information, ensuring impactful digital presence and customer engagement in the AI era.

Kevin Shui, CMO, Starry

2026 would see further AI advancements and technological breakthroughs. This leads to shifts in how people interact with the world around them — across the digital space and physical experiences — and how businesses could engage effectively with consumers.

Brands have to offer a more 360-degree, personalised phygital experience and offer, powered by AI-driven data analytics and actions. As Gen Z becomes a power consumption force, we shall see the rise of immersive, phygital, experiential marketing campaigns, likely intellectual property (IP)-led or blended with arts and culture, but more than just being Instagrammable. AI and technologies play important roles in enhancing the experience and unlocking business opportunities along the phygital brand journey.

Our strategic focus for 2026 will centre on AI-driven data analytics to power a more personalised customer journey, enhancing both our marketing campaigns and event experiences. From a budgeting perspective, we will maintain our investment in partnership and co-marketing initiatives while increasing our allocation for answer engine optimisation (AEO) to capture high-intent B2B demand.

We will leverage AI data analytics, our extensive network of content creators followed by millions of fans across the region, and our IP resources to create and curate content and phygital experiences. This approach will enable brands to effectively engage and convert consumers, leading to promising business outcomes.

Stella Leung, SVP, Greater China and Korea, The Trade Desk

The biggest shift ahead is not a single technology—it’s a structural reset of the programmatic ecosystem. Today, many advertisers struggle with a supply chain that feels complex and opaque, making it hard to understand where their budgets go or the quality of the placements they buy.

The next wave is a collective push for a cleaner, simpler, and more transparent supply path. Advertisers want accountability, publishers want fairness, and audiences want high-quality experiences on the open internet. These pressures are converging to reshape the value exchange across the ecosystem.

In many ways, the open internet is entering a new stage of maturity. We’re moving away from a fragmented system toward one built on direct connections, shared standards, and clear returns. This shift will redefine how trust, value, and performance are created in digital advertising.

Our priority at The Trade Desk in 2026 is to build a more transparent, efficient, and value-driven supply chain for the open internet. Instead of isolated tools, we’re investing in an integrated ecosystem that brings clarity and control to both advertisers and publishers. Key components include:

• OpenAds – the open internet’s most transparent and clean auction, designed to ensure advertisers see where value is created.
• Deal Desk – unifying and optimising premium deals, giving buyers more visibility and consistency across marketplaces.
• PubDesk – empowering publishers with direct insights into buyer demand, enabling smarter yield and inventory decisions.
• Audience Unlimited – simplifying high-quality data access so advertisers can activate third-party data more cost-effectively across channels.
• OpenSincera – offering the industry free, standardised metadata on ad quality signals such as density, page weight, and refresh rates.

Together, these tools form a cohesive framework that contributes to strengthening transparency and performance across the entire supply chain – benefiting advertisers, publishers, and ultimately the open internet.

For the Hong Kong market in particular, audience attention is increasingly fragmented across a vast landscape—from streaming TV and online video to digital audio, connected devices, and even physical retail. Consumers move seamlessly between online and offline environments, and their journey is no longer linear. For brands, this means that every screen, every surface, and every moment along the journey matters.

One of our key areas of focus is enabling true omnichannel orchestration –delivering consistent, relevant, and emotionally resonant experiences at every touchpoint —whether viewers are watching connected TV (CTV), listening to a podcast, or browsing on their phone.

This isn't just about achieving broad reach; it's about creating connected moments that keep brands visible and meaningful, turning awareness into action and maximising the impact of every marketing dollar. In an era of short attention spans, this level of connected presence is essential for driving real outcomes across the open internet.

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