Programmatic advertising is entering a transition phase as marketers shift toward unified cross-channel strategies to improve performance and reduce wasted spending, according to a 2026 industry report by StackAdapt.
Based on a survey of 484 senior marketers in the United States, Canada and Britain, along with platform data from more than 6,000 advertisers worldwide, the report found strong optimism about the sector’s outlook.
Seventy-five percent of marketers expect budgets to grow, while 84 percent reported improved marketing performance year-on-year.
However, the study identified a significant gap between high-performing advertisers and the rest of the industry, particularly in the ability to integrate advertising channels and workflows.
Two-thirds of marketers said fragmented channel execution wastes up to 30 percent of programmatic advertising budgets, highlighting the financial impact of siloed marketing operations. Advertisers running integrated campaigns consistently reported lower levels of budget waste.
Multi-channel campaigns delivered 47 percent higher click-through rates than single-channel campaigns among advanced advertisers, the report said. These advertisers were also more likely to run campaigns across five or more channels, suggesting broader adoption of advanced targeting and measurement tools improves results.
Regional differences were evident. British marketers were the most advanced in unified execution, with 61 percent saying they frequently run cross-channel campaigns. In the United States, however, 44 percent cited cross-funnel measurement as the biggest obstacle to integration.
Despite improvements in measurement tools, the report said operational integration remains incomplete.
“Unified execution leads to higher measurable performance, while fragmentation continues to erode efficiency and scale,” the report said.
The shift toward integrated campaigns reflects broader changes in digital advertising, where marketers are increasingly trying to coordinate messaging across connected TV, digital video, display, and social channels rather than treating each platform separately
Case-study data cited in the report showed that a unified campaign for a hotel group in Asia-Pacific, combining connected TV, video and retargeting, achieved a 43 percent increase in brand consideration.
The report concluded that advertisers are likely to widen the performance gap between integrated and fragmented strategies in 2026, as companies that unify creative, data, and measurement systems gain a growing competitive advantage.
