The best thought leadership topics for AdTech companies in 2026 and 2027

AdTech thought leaders have their work cut out for them. 

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In an ironic turn of events, AI, a tool which was meant to make creating content easier has made it more difficult than ever for AdTech companies to stand out and produce thought leadership that drives growth. 

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Journalists are becoming more skeptical and picky when it comes to stories, underscored by Cision data which shows that 39% of journalists strongly oppose AI use by PR professionals in pitches. What’s more, readers are also getting tired of AI-generated word salad, with more than a million people complaining about AI slop on LinkedIn.

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That said, this growing discontent has created an unrivalled opportunity for the AdTech leaders willing to forego the status quo and talk about original topics and share a unique point of view.

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We’ve spoken about what AdTech gets wrong about thought leadership and the topics they need to stop talking about, but here are the five thought leadership topics that AdTech companies should be talking about in 2026 and 2027. 

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TL;DR

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• Key AdTech trends for 2026 and 2027 include AI accountability, CTV intelligence, mobile behavior, human-centred marketing, and privacy-led product design.
  
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1. AI accountability

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We often hear people say journalists are no longer interested in bylines about AI. That’s not true. What they’re not interested in is the same old arguments around AI adoption. You only have to look at the slew of AI stories circulating at the minute, about everything from the controversial Meta glasses to big tech companies such as Oura creating new AI leadership roles, to see that AI as a theme isn’t going anywhere. But for AdTech leaders to create thought leadership that drives growth, they have to be careful of how they frame these stories. 

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Accountability, trust, and governance are extremely hot topics right now and are only going to get more important as AI moves from supporting workflows to taking actions. Automated planning, buying, optimization, and creative decisions may deliver speed, but they can also scale weak data, unclear incentives, and poor judgement.

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Advertisers need to understand who remains accountable. Publishers need to know how automated buyers will assess quality and value. Agencies need to decide where human expertise makes the biggest difference. Consumers need confidence that increasingly autonomous systems are not acting in ways they would find unfair or intrusive.

This creates room for leaders who can move the debate from capability to consequence.

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Content angles for AdTech leaders to explore: 

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•  “AI-powered” is the new “digital-first”. Why the label has become meaningless and the next competitive advantage will be measurable decision quality.
• The best advertising AI may be the one marketers barely notice. A prediction that useful automation will win by reducing friction, not generating the loudest launch campaign.

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Propeller’s advice: For tier-one media publications, lead with the human or commercial consequence. For a technical title, go deeper into standards, permissions, audit trails, and the infrastructure that makes autonomous decisions safe enough to scale.

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2. CTV intelligence

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CTV will remain one of advertising's biggest stories with global CTV ad spend expected to exceed $38 billion by 2027. It’s one of the fastest-growing areas of media investment as advertisers continue to shift budgets from linear television to streaming environments.

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What’s more, streaming is increasingly expected to work across the funnel. The market is moving towards incrementality and business outcomes rather than reach alone, with better data signals and cross-platform measurement central to the next phase of growth.

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That means AdTech thought leaders have an opportunity to discuss more than access to inventory. They can explain how viewing signals reveal intent, how creative should adapt to different viewing moods, how cultural momentum travels between screens, and how advertisers can act without flattening every environment into the same plan.

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Content angles for AdTech leaders to explore: 

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• CTV fragmentation is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. How the industry's obsession with complexity can reinforce the silos it says it wants to remove.
• What the next breakout streaming hit will reveal before the brand tracker does. How search, app, and content signals can identify cultural momentum while it is still useful.

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Propeller’s advice: A contemporary entertainment, celebrity, or sporting hook can open the door to a broader publication. A specialist outlet will want the mechanics behind incrementality, frequency, signal interoperability, and creative delivery. The message should be connected, but the pitch should be written for the reader in front of you.

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3. Mobile as the bridge between commerce and culture

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Mobile has become so central to daily life that the AdTech industry often treats it as a given. 90% of US adults own a smartphone and about four in ten Americans say they are online almost constantly. Yet mobile is frequently discussed as a delivery format rather than the place where people discover, create, communicate, shop, navigate, and organize their lives.

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The opportunity for AdTech thought leadership is much bigger than a small screen. The smartphone is now a camera, studio, shop, search engine, games console, payment device, and remote control for wider culture. Multimodal AI is accelerating content creation, while apps continue to organize people into communities, tribes, and networks with their own unique behaviors and language.

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That’s why mobile deserves a new strategic conversation.

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The AdTech brands with something useful to say will look beyond “mobile-first”. They will explore how a hand-held device shapes identity, participation, and purchase behavior, and how marketers can engage those moments without interrupting or exploiting them.

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Content angles for AdTech leaders to explore: 

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• Mobile did not disappear. AdTech stopped noticing it. A contrarian argument for treating mobile as a strategic environment rather than a format line on a media plan.
• The smartphone is culture's camera, studio, shop, and remote control. How creation, community and commerce are collapsing into one device.

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Propeller’s advice: This is fertile ground for timely analogies. The annual back-to-school shopping season, when parents suddenly switch into research, comparison and purchase mode, is a dream scenario for an organized data stack that can detect intent and activate relevant creative quickly. The topicality may get attention, but the argument still needs discipline: a reactive moment should sharpen the message, not leave the brand with homework it can't justify. 

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4. Human behavior is the signal technology cannot replace

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Marketers don’t buy technology for its own sake. They buy the possibility of a better connection, decision, or result. Similarly, consumers don’t experience an optimization engine. They experience whether a message feels relevant, intrusive, useful, funny, reassuring, or forgettable.

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That’s why understanding behavior, attention, and digital culture is crucial for effective marketing, and a key topic AdTech leaders should be talking about in 2026 and 2027. Technology can identify patterns at enormous scale, but human expertise is still required to interpret meaning, exercise judgement, and turn an observation into an idea people care about.

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Content angles for AdTech leaders to explore: 

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• Attention is not a currency until it can explain a decision. A challenge to the industry's tendency to turn every useful indicator into a universal score.
• AdTech has optimized the audience and underinvested in empathy. Why better targeting cannot rescue a message that misunderstands the person receiving it.

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Propeller’s advice: This theme benefits from a spokesperson with a real point of view. “Put the consumer first” will not interest a journalist. A specific tension will. What does the industry misunderstand about attention? Which accepted metric produces the wrong behavior? What common practice damages the connection it claims to improve?

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5. Privacy-led product design

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The privacy debate is moving beyond the death of the third-party cookie. The stronger conversation for 2026 and 2027 is how permission, data quality, and product design shape what can be activated and measured.

First-party data is not necessarily first-class data. “Privacy-safe” should be demonstrated, not declared.

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The opportunity for thought leadership is to replace vague reassurance with practical choices. Which signals are genuinely useful? What can be achieved with less data? Where should information stay put? How can privacy become part of product quality rather than a compliance layer added at the end?

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Content angles for AdTech leaders to explore: 

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• First-party does not mean first-class. Why ownership says nothing about accuracy, permission, or usefulness.
• The future of targeting may be less data, better used. A prediction that minimization and signal quality will outperform indiscriminate accumulation.

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Propeller’s advice: This is where specialist AdTech and data publications will reward precision. A broader business or marketing title is more likely to respond to the human and commercial tension: consent fatigue, unequal value exchange, customer confidence or the cost of rebuilding a system that ignored privacy at the design stage.

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If you need guidance on how to choose a PR agency for your AdTech company or want advice on what your AdTech company should be talking about, make sure to get in touch.

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