Media leaders are planning for turbulence in 2026 but not retreat.
The latest Global Media Budget Survey from Ebiquity and the WFA shows that 46% of global marketers expect budgets to grow next year, with only a limited minority anticipating cuts. At the same time, global decision makers are rebalancing towards performance activity, shifting spend out of linear TV, print and even digital display, and leaning harder into addressable TV and retail media.
But there is a more fundamental change sitting beneath these channel reallocations. Three quarters of marketers with a global remit expect greater integration between creative and media in 2026. 41% plan to build business outcomes into agency remuneration. AI is moving from experimentation into day-to-day optimisation, reporting, creative production, and planning.
Against that backdrop, Ron Amram, Global Head of Media at Mars and previously at Heineken, joined our recent webinar to discuss how Mars is redesigning its marketing and agency model. His perspective sheds light on how advanced marketers are moving and what it requires internally.
From media buying to an integrated decision engine
Mars began its redesign with a clear premise. Marketing decisions now form an interconnected system, requiring a model that truly reflects this reality.
As Ron Amram put it, several forces are colliding at once: access to richer first-party and retail media data, the maturation of AI and agentic AI, and the need to optimise not only media placements but also creative production and content at scale. For most organisations, these shifts are happening in parallel rather than in sequence, which is why many teams feel they are redesigning the plane mid-flight. Gradual change to the operating model will not keep pace. It needs a fundamental redesign now.
“It is a perfect storm: access to data, leveraging retail media, and the emergence of AI and agentic AI that allows you to optimise not just media execution but also placement and production. All of those things need to sit in the same data set. It becomes one big AI model, or agent. It is not about buying cheaper or slightly better creative. It is about more effective campaigns.”
If the ambition is holistic effectiveness, then the operating model has to mirror that. That means:
- Tearing down internal silos between media, creative, digital, ecommerce and data teams.
- Removing artificial separation between “upper” and “lower” funnel decisions.
- Giving partners access to a shared backbone of information rather than fragmented, channel-by-channel views.
For Mars, that led directly to its new partnership with Publicis. The ‘Mars Model’ brings creative production and media capabilities into one integrated structure with a common set of objectives and governance. Ron described it as building a “nucleus” model.
“It really started with a simple question: what is the right agency structure to execute how we see the future? We needed a nucleus model where there is access across all facets of our marketing investments, all connected to the same backbone of information.”
Rather than a consolidation for cost reasons, it is a deliberate move to match a new agency “marketing operating company” structure with a different way of making decisions inside Mars.
As decision-making becomes more interconnected, operating models built around sequential hand-offs and channel silos will increasingly work against effectiveness rather than enable it.
PESO replaces “media” in the measurement vocabulary
The Global Media Budget Survey shows budgets continuing to move towards performance channels; this risks coming at the expense of long-term brand building. That pattern is reinforced by a measurement system still built around paid media, especially digital. Amram argued that this needs to change fundamentally, and that paid media should no longer be the default lens.
“We were very heavily focused on paid media. Media mix modelling was really the core. We had to go beyond that, which is why we deliberately replaced the word ‘media’ with PESO. (Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned)”
The focus shifts to understanding every touchpoint between brand and consumer – not only the paid ones. A few parts of that shift are especially relevant as AI turns into a primary discovery and decision layer:
- Owned assets become much more valuable. As Ron put it, “content almost defines where you end up in baskets”. If AI-powered discovery engines rely on structured product information, high-quality content and robust metadata, then the brand’s own environments are no longer just endpoints. They shape demand.
- Shared spaces increasingly blur into paid and earned. Influencers and creators sit somewhere between advertising, advocacy and content partnerships. They are rarely bought in seconds or frames, and they require brands to let go of some creative control. A PESO model forces these investments into the same planning and measurement system as traditional media, rather than treating them as an afterthought.
- Connected commerce has to be part of the model. Lower-funnel and retail media activity is not an optional add-on. It is woven into how consumers search, compare, add to basket and repeat. As Amram noted, connected commerce is “in the PESO model”, not adjacent to it.
By shifting from media to PESO, Mars is deliberately pushing its teams and partners to optimise across the full set of touchpoints: what the brand owns, what it influences or licenses others to say, and what it pays to place. Bringing these strands into a single system creates the basis for its next ambition: outcome-based remuneration.
Outcome-based agency models require skin in the game, not vanity metrics
The Budget Survey shows that 41% of global marketers expect to include business outcomes in agency remuneration models in 2026. The intention is to align incentives to real growth rather than inputs or easy-to-hit proxy metrics. The execution, however, has historically been difficult.
Ron has been exploring this territory since his time at Heineken.
“If you can value the relationship and reward growth to your agency, that is something both sides will sign up for. Their task is to recruit and grow our brands, to recruit new consumers. If you can measure the impact accurately, both parties are willing. The question has always been whether you can measure it accurately and give credit where it is due.”
In sectors such as CPG or beverages the challenges are well understood. Retailers control pricing and shelf space. Supply chain issues, out-of-stocks and distribution gaps can suppress sales regardless of media quality. This can make it “uncomfortable” to put agencies on the hook for factors they cannot influence. Every CPG marketer recognises this tension. While accountability is essential, commercial reality is rarely linear.
But two developments change the equation:
- Better and more granular measurement across the PESO spectrum. Connecting upper and lower funnel signals, incorporating shared and owned touchpoints, and moving beyond vanity digital metrics allows for more credible proxies for effectiveness.
- Greater vertical integration in agency models. As Ruben Schreurs observed, when a brand works with “100 different partners on a similar scope”, attribution becomes a political exercise: many claim credit when things go well, and finger pointing starts when results weaken. A more integrated agency model provides a clearer line of sight from strategy through to execution and measurement.
Amram stressed that outcome-based models only work if both sides see risk and reward as balanced.
“When you put real skin in the game, everyone works a bit harder. We have seen that with our agencies in the past. When you give them something to hunt and credible KPIs that can be tracked objectively, they work harder. The issue is whether you can do it accurately, effectively and objectively.”
A practical takeaway for senior marketers is to avoid starting with a grand, total-business outcome model. Start by defining a limited number of robust, objective KPIs that reflect incremental marketing impact, then build remuneration components around those.
Working with the new Marketing Operating Companies
One of the strongest signals in the survey is the expectation of much tighter integration between media and creative. Three quarters of global respondents anticipate greater integration in 2026. Even at a local level, two thirds expect the disciplines to come closer together. Advertisers point to greater agility and real-time relevance as key drivers for bringing the disciplines closer together.
Agency groups are moving in the same direction. After two to three decades of fragmentation into specialist labels, the large networks are repositioning as vertically integrated marketing operating companies.
Ron recognises this shift clearly.
“To be fair, I think the agency world is preaching this themselves now. With their best clients, and their best work, they believe they can create speed to market and better results simply by having more decisioning at their fingertips and breaking down walls. Even if we are messy and siloed, they can tie a lot together for us.”
For brand leaders, this shift brings a mix of opportunity and risk. A more integrated agency model can create stronger control and transparency, along with a more coherent deployment of data, identity, AI and media across markets. It also opens the door to commercial frameworks that reward group-wide outcomes rather than isolated outputs.
The trade-offs are equally significant. Over-centralisation can erode the local autonomy and cultural nuance that many brands rely on. Proprietary data and AI stacks raise questions about
long-term control and the risk of lock-in. And principal buying models require a level of internal understanding that is not always in place.
Mars’ experience highlights three design questions that senior marketers should be asking now:
- How well does our internal operating model match the way our key agency partners are now organised, particularly on the balance between global coordination and local flexibility?
- Which data, identity and AI capabilities should we own, which are we comfortable licensing, and which are we happy to “borrow” from agency partners?
- Are our commercial frameworks rewarding true, incremental outcomes, or are they quietly protecting input-based incentives that penalise innovation and efficiency?
What progressive marketers prioritise in 2026
Towards the end of the session, Ron returned to two themes: measurement and confidence. Despite geopolitical instability, economic uncertainty and operational shocks since COVID-19, he sees reasons for cautious optimism.
“We cannot undermine measurement. It is a critical piece, and it unlocks so much. Even with the cloudiness and difficulty of the past few years, there is still optimism. Businesses like certainty and stability, and the world has been destabilised for a long time now. Going into next year there is, hopefully, a bit more confidence.”
Four priorities stand out for senior media and marketing leaders:
- Rebuild measurement around PESO to move beyond paid media. Expand beyond media and channel-specific dashboards. Incorporate owned, earned, shared and connected commerce data into a single view of audience reach and impact.
- Design your operating model to match an integrated future. Treat creative and media, central and local, brand and performance as parts of the same system. Build a “nucleus” structure internally and with partners, underpinned by a common data backbone.
- Test outcome-based components in agency remuneration. Start with a handful of robust, objective KPIs that reflect true incremental impact. Use them to introduce meaningful “skin in the game” on both sides, rather than relying solely on FTE or output-based models.
- Use AI with defined purpose, rather than treating it as open-ended experimentation. Focus on defined use cases where AI can improve media optimisation, planning or reporting in measurable ways. Align investments with the commercial and operating model, so that efficiency gains benefit both the brand and its partners.
The 2026 Global Media Budget Survey shows that the most advanced marketers are not just shifting money between channels. They are re-architecting how decisions are made, how success is measured, and how value is shared with partners.
Mars’ journey is one of the clearest examples of that shift. It demonstrates that integrating creative, media, data, and AI into a single system has moved from ambition to implementation, a reality that will shape the next era of media investment.
