Between the Super Bowl, Winter Olympics, March Madness, NBA All Star game and soccer’s World Cup, the sporting planets are aligned for a blockbuster media season through this summer.

Media owners and broadcasters (especially NBCU, which holds the rights to several of the biggest live sports events this spring) are thrilled about the coming windfall. Dentsu’s 2026 forecast report estimated that live sports spending would push overall global advertising to reach $1.04 trillion this year.

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OTHER THINGS TO KNOW

• Every manual task, campaign setup, pacing, tagging and trafficking leaks margin. Agencies that lean into AI media agents as the first line of financial defense will find that their revenue isn’t squandered to inefficiency. Partner insights from fullthrottle.ai.
• As AI evolves from automation to autonomy, marketers are rethinking how campaigns run and how marketing organizations operate. Virgin Money is using AI-driven audience optimization so its agency team can focus on strategic tasks — all while reaping the rewards of improved performance as noted by its agency partner, mFuse. Partner insights from Quantcast.
• Leaders need new frameworks for handling the human-agent hybrid workforce. This means rethinking foundational assumptions about expertise, collaboration and career development. Partner insights from BetterUp.

PARTNER INSIGHTS FROM ACTIVISON BLIZZARD MEDIA

PARTNER INSIGHTS FROM THE WEATHER COMPANY

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PARTNER INSIGHTS FROM PADSQUAD