I recently had the opportunity to join Verve’s “AdTech Debrief Roundtable 2025” to discuss what actually happened in our industry this year. If last year was about headlines and promises, this year was about what actually happened, what scaled, and what stuck.

The industry is moving fast, but three clear realities emerged during our discussion regarding Privacy, AI, and the explosion of CTV.

Here are my top takeaways from the panel and what they mean for your strategy going into 2026.

There was a lot of panic about “identity scarcity” this year, but the reality on the ground was different. We didn’t move to no identity; we moved to a usable identity supported by a better context.

The most successful advertisers I worked with this year wanted the performance upside of their first-party data, but they were uncompromising about privacy and control.

• The Approach: We call this building a “wall, not a moat”.
• What it means: Your data should be protected within a silo (the wall) so it never mixes with other advertisers, but it must still work effectively inside the channel to drive targeting.
• The Result: When you layer anonymized first-party signals over contextual targeting, performance actually improves.

AI was the loudest buzzword of 2025. However, we agreed that AI only truly changes business outcomes when it is inside the system, rather than just bolted onto the side.

At Smadex, we saw the shift from “Generative AI” (making creative assets) to “Agentic AI” (improving operations).

• Deep Learning: We used models (similar to LLMs) to power bidding and pacing under the hood. This allowed campaigns to adapt faster and budget to find opportunities earlier.
• Commercial Support: We even deployed internal AI assistants to give our teams instant access to insights, allowing us to move at the speed of our clients.

2025 was the year Connected TV (CTV) finally crossed the line from a brand awareness channel to a true performance engine. Advertisers stopped asking if CTV works and started asking how to scale it.

The data backs this up. Once we could connect a TV exposure to a mobile action at the household level, we saw undeniable results:

• The Halo Effect: We are seeing a roughly 30% lift in “organic” conversions that were actually influenced by a CTV ad.
• Efficiency: CTV isn’t just performing on its own; it makes every other channel (like search and social) more efficient.

Because of this ability to track cross-device impact, I predicted on the panel that 2026 is the year last-click attribution finally dies. We can now see too much value trapped outside of that narrow measurement to ignore it.

Finally, we touched on “Q5,” the period post-holiday when CPMs drop. The smartest buyers aren’t waiting for the calendar to flip. They are warming up audiences and building retargeting lists now. If you want to win Q5, treat it as a continuation of your Q4 momentum, not a reset.