Digital Marketing Strategy 2026: CTV, AI Search, and ROI Tracking

NOTE: This blog is a transcript from a podcast and therefore may contain errors.

Shannon Allen: Welcome to Digital Marketing, ROI. I’m your host Shannon Allen, and I’m joined to start the year off by my favorite co-host, Krystal Vivian.

Krystal, how are we doing today on this kind of snowy day?

Krystal Vivian: I’m a little chilly, but otherwise I’m doing pretty good.

Shannon Allen: Yeah.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah, we have managed, get

Shannon Allen: a good holiday, got through the holidays, everybody’s healthy.

Krystal Vivian: Great. I was gonna say great holiday season. We had a great time. It was a good mix of productive and also restful, which was really nice.

We have not gotten hit, knock on wood by the super flu yet, so we’re hoping to avoid that.

Shannon Allen: Yeah, it’s always a great way to start the year. Everybody gets sick, but you might lose weight.

Krystal Vivian: Hey, there’s always, I love that you

Shannon Allen: all side

Krystal Vivian: look at the silver lining,

Shannon Allen: silver lining, right?

Krystal Vivian: How are you doing?

Shannon Allen: I’m good. I’m ready. I think 2026. Mark, my word’s gonna be a great year. Some of the things we talked about in our. Podcasts episodes in 2025 I feel are really coming, ringing true, and we’re really driving it home. This is one of my favorite training sessions to do that. We’re really turning into a podcast, which is just looking at what’s coming for digital trends in 2026, right?

Great time to talk about it. Today I wanna talk about where the big money is moving when it comes to digital marketing. For this year, we’re starting to see a real massive shift in streaming. We’ve been talking about this all year long. CTV buzzword streaming buzzword, right?

It’s officially overtaken cable and broadcast TV for the first time ever back in 2025, technically in May of 2025. So this isn’t new. We spent a lot of the year with that tipping point. We’re also seeing that AI is answering 60% of searches without anyone clicking to a website. And businesses are finally really waking up to the fact that if you don’t know your numbers we’re flying blind.

So attribution and conversion and ROI. Our big buzzwords of 2026, not only for us at FDS, but it should be for all business owners, right?

Krystal Vivian: I agree 100%. Let’s go through those, each one individually and tackle them. Shannon, let’s start with CTV because we have been talking about it for years.

Yeah. But like you said, with the tipping point that happened in May last year, and once we’ve tipped, we’ve toppled. Yeah. And it’s only going to continue to grow. Can you walk us through what’s happening with audiences this year in 2026? Where are they going and why does cable TV no longer make sense for most advertisers?

Shannon Allen: So it’s, cable, linear, the old school way is where I’m focusing on. But I’m gonna, I’m gonna hit on a couple stats that we’ll expand upon. But as we said in just, in, just a few minutes ago that it was May of 2025 that Nielsen came out with the tipping point, right?

That streaming now accounted for just under 45% of total TV viewership. We’re talking about viewership right now, which tackled both. The combination of cable and broadcast together, so cable was about 24%. Broadcast was down to about 20%. So that tipping point is now less than all streaming combined.

That’s a big thing. So this is really that moment that cable and linear officially lost in the viewership, right? So that’s only gonna grow. There’s no, there isn’t. Cable can do whatever they want to try to bring that in, but they understand that their own owned and operated box is diminishing and there’s no way to do it other than to join in, to continue on to the streaming bandwagon, right?

So let’s talk cable specifically. Right now we really saw a subscriber free fall in the past year, really in the past couple years, but as of right now, just 34.4% of US households subscribe to traditional pay TV services as of 2024. So this is in 2024. We were already down,

Krystal Vivian: that’s two

Shannon Allen: years ago. I know which it was 80% penetration in 2011.

Krystal Vivian: Wow.

Shannon Allen: Let that sink in. Two years ago we hit 34, so we know we’re less. 2011 was at an 80% penetration of cable.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah,

Shannon Allen: big numbers, right? We also saw over 25 million subscribers lost since 2012. So to just grab what that looks like, 25 million people left cable since 2012. So they’ve been bleeding those.

But that doesn’t mean that they’re not

Krystal Vivian: watching content.

Shannon Allen: Oh, they’re watching. That’s they just, they’re not, I, it’s important. Yeah.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah.

Shannon Allen: That’s very important. So let’s look at some projections. So by 2026, over 80 million US households will use what is considered a non pay TV services, right? These are the majority that are cord cutters or really cord nevers.

So this is these consumers, this is my niece at 25 using. She is only watching Pluto tv. It’s a non-pay subscription, right? You are going in, you agree to watch the commercials, but you will get everything else for free to, to get your local tv, right?

Krystal Vivian: Yes.

Shannon Allen: By the end of 2026, only 54 million households are expected to remain subscribed to traditional pay tv.

So to, to tie that in 2022, they were sitting at 65.1 million. 75% of US households with a TV will no longer have traditional TV subscription by this year. Wow. That’s big year. Okay.

Krystal Vivian: That’s huge.

Shannon Allen: Let’s look at

Krystal Vivian: this from, that’s super local and broadcast.

Shannon Allen: Yes, it’s huge. Let’s look at it daily. So this is a number from 2024, so we can’t imagine what it is, but on a daily, over 4 million people canceled cable in the first half of 24 alone.

Okay. That’s nearly 22,000 cancellations per day, every single day. Wow. Back in 2024. Those are big numbers, and I have a few of our clients that are still spending a lot on cable. I’m not saying that there isn’t an audience there, but adjust your budget to match who’s sitting there. So if only 15% of your local audience is watching cable, only invest that amount.

Right.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah. You want, ’cause you need to follow where the audience is spending their time.

Shannon Allen: Yes. So let’s talk about financial, and I don’t wanna say collapse, but what is the financial look at this. Leonard TV ad spending declined by 13% while cable TV viewerships reduced by 10%. Just in the last year, it’s only gonna grow 10% is a lot.

Why are people leaving? You’re a younger generation. You don’t have cable, you don’t have you’re a hundred percent streaming. Is that true?

Krystal Vivian: We’re a hundred percent streaming. We had cable a few years ago, mostly for sports, and as sports have moved to streaming, it’s gotten a lot easier for us to, we cut the cord, I wanna say 20 18, 20 19.

It just, it wasn’t necessary for us. It might’ve been even a little

Shannon Allen: bit

Krystal Vivian: later. It wasn’t No,

Shannon Allen: no. Cable can be expensive. It can be 150 bucks a month. When you bundle everything, it can be 200 easily when you bundle it easily. So right now. Why are people are leaving? Eight and 10 people cited price is the top reason for the cutting, right?

Households that subscribe to multiple streaming services typically pay $70 or less, so they have a big savings there, right? That’s, that can be a YouTube tv, but YouTube TV continues to change.

Krystal Vivian: , And the other nice thing about it is that you can cycle through which services that you’re using at any one time.

So we pay for, Disney plus ’cause we have a toddler. That’s something that we always have. But then we’ll rotate between Netflix and Paramount and HBO and. Peacock and all of the other ones, depending on what content we’re watching. And once we’re done watching that show, we’re like, okay, what do we wanna watch next?

And where is it? Or if there’s a lot of stuff that we know is coming out on Netflix and it’s okay, we’re gonna have Netflix for the next couple of months and then we’ll cancel it and then we’ll move on to something else.

Shannon Allen: And here’s the part, not everybody understands we, there was something that happened over Christmas where one of my sales reps said, okay.

Our client is running streaming with us, but I saw their commercial. She thought she was watching YouTube tv and she said I was watching a football game with my husband that had to be us. And I said, no, because YouTube TV is one of the few, multi virtual paying platforms that people are still sub subscribing to.

That is a walled garden. So you have to go directly through them in order to do that by, and we can get there with our services, but you have to go through the door. Just, that’s the way to do it. And I said you had to been watching something else ’cause you don’t always remember what you’re watching.

And come to find out, they were still buying something locally through a cable. And so there was something that ran and the client didn’t even know it, that they were running there. And there’s so many ways to reach consumers anymore, she was absolutely right. We can reach.

We can be delivered on an NBC station. But we’re not getting it. If they’re watching the YouTube TV platform, we’re get, they’re watching it. If they’re peacock subscribers, they could be on Hulu and we reach ’em through our services. They can be just on Roku, they can be on Pluto tv. So there’s so many different platforms to understand the channel you’re watching.

So it gets confusing.

So I wanna talk about the targeting as that relates to that. So the targeting problem for advertisers, if they’re just buying cable and linear is you’re very limited, right? You’re not, you don’t have really any capabilities other than assuming you’re on cable that you can target women and they might be watching these particular channels.

You can make a guess that way, right? You can’t target by zip code. You’re buying an entire DMA region with both ca, cable and linear. If you’re somebody like our local, one of our local tire companies we work with, they have locations all over Elkhart in Indi, in Indiana. As well as in Illinois, they’d have to buy multiple stations in order to get that.

We don’t have that issue when it comes to streaming. A business that wants to target 25 to 45 year olds also is in, with the cable buy, is also getting 65 plus viewers watching the same show. What’s the math? You’re gonna pay premium rates to effectively reach maybe seven to 10% of households.

With 90% of that spend in a waste. You’re wasting money when you could be targeting and we know the demographics, so we know Yes. A an older demographic tends to still be on the cable box and the linear tv. We know that, but that’s starting to change. My mom is 75 and she watches all streaming.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah, my father-in-law is 70 and he doesn’t have cable and doesn’t, and watches everything on streaming.

Shannon Allen: Yeah. And and we’re having conversations now that we never had. I was listening to the morning show. Locally, recently on my way, on my drive to a meeting yesterday. And the question of that they were asking their listeners was on an average, how many streaming platforms do you subscribe to?

How many do you get for free? It’s a conversation that’s now in a daily conversation.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah. And we know that the audiences have moved. They’re moved to streaming. What about CTV advertising spending? Are businesses moving their money to that accordingly?

And why does that matter to local and mid-size businesses?

Shannon Allen: It’s a great question. We talked about viewership mainly already. Yeah. So let’s talk about some of the dollars. So CTV ad spending. This doesn’t mean a lot to the average business owner, but when you think about where the money’s moving to, that’s what a local guy needs to think about for their business.

We’re predicted in 2026 to reach 38 billion on CTV alone on ad spend, right? Which is grow, which is a growth of 14% from last year to this year. Big growth number. Meanwhile, we’re seeing a decline with cable and linear TV to the point of it. They’re gonna see it, right? It is a political year.

It’s not the big political year, but they’re, they’ll still maybe see it. On a political view, but not overall. By 2028, CTV will surpass traditional TV ad spending for the first time ever. So I know people are like in, oh I thought we surpassed it in 2026. Viewership. Surpassed.

Krystal Vivian: Yes. It always takes a little bit for the money to follow.

Shannon Allen: For the money to follow. Yep.

Krystal Vivian: Does that,

Shannon Allen: so that was the big one.

Krystal Vivian: Is there a competitive advantage for businesses that make the jump sooner rather than later?

Shannon Allen: I think so. Personally when I think about this you never wanna be the last one to the game, right?

And this is a time to really figure out what you wanna do.

And the big thing is, we had this meeting with a credit union yesterday is. Attribution is a big conversation and we’re gonna talk about that here at the end with about trends. There is a little bit less attribution with CTV compared to some of the other digital products and solutions that you should be doing and other channels.

However, it still has more attribution than cable and TV ever can show. Right?

Very different conversation because of the targeting, but is there an advantage to get to the path early? Yes, because you’ll have your strategy down. Because I’m still not telling people to pull everything out of their TV budget.

I’m almost there. I’ll be honest. I’m almost to the point where I’m like, because if you have enough budget to spends. Sprinkle it around where you can, but if you’re on a limited budget, why split it between linear and cable and streaming? Choose where the audience is, right?

Krystal Vivian: Yeah. So

Shannon Allen: that’s

Krystal Vivian: So you know that you’re getting your exact audience

Shannon Allen: right?

Our performance advantage is. CTV has that 98% completion rate. Right? Why is that? Because they’re UNSKIPABLE ads, so you, whereas we know that traditional TV viewers, whether that’s cable or tv, they’re fast forwarding through the commercials because of the DVR. So when you move to streaming, you are forced to it, but the audience is changing too.

We’ve been spoiled for so long. You probably don’t remember, but I remember the day that if I wanted to fast forward, I had to record it on my VCR and I had to use my remote to fast forward the recording. And there was also a day I had to just watch commercials. We’re a little bit back to that because consumers are willing to pay less to watch the commercials and they’re.

They’re also targeted, so they’re more invested in it than they ever before.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah. The commercials are a lot more interesting now because they are targeted, and especially because when I know I’m getting a commercial for something that I know that I’m interested in buying or that I’ve been researching, it’s oh, this is really helpful.

But also the quality of the commercials is they’re very entertaining now. Exactly. And my 3-year-old sings the jingles of

Shannon Allen: right,

Krystal Vivian: of some of the commercials because they’re so catchy. She gets really excited about commercials. It’s really fun. She’s got a great feature in marketing.

Shannon Allen: I love that. We’re gonna put her in a test group.

Another reason why a business should care is what I already touched on, was the targeting right. We can geo-target down to a zip code level. You only pay for your service area. We can target age, income, interests, purchase behavior, search behavior, right? You’re not wasting an entire DMA if you want 25 to 45-year-old, consumers in the Muskegon area, they’re looking for cars right now.

You only are targeting those viewers. That’s the goal, right? And our penetration. So right now we can reach 90. 93 to 99% of households through streaming versus 34%, which is cable penetration. Like why wouldn’t we do it this way?

Krystal Vivian: That’s insane.

Shannon Allen: I know. When I was pulling some of these numbers to, to use for the training deck, I’m like, if.

I go into a client this year that’s putting more money into TV and cable than ever before. I am literally just gonna go through these stats and say, don’t be the last one. Know where we’re spending our money.

Krystal Vivian: What’s the hesitation to make the jump? Why do businesses still feel like they need to invest in TV more so than CTV?

Shannon Allen: I think it’s changed. I think it’s local brands. I think understanding that. I have so many business owners are like I’m streaming with you, but I’m not seeing my commercial. So there’s a little ego there. I think business owners love to see their commercial, it’s why I’ve been able to build out a local news.

I always say to my car dealers, if you’re buying the local CBS station, why are you just wanting to be there on their local news? What if. I could have you show up on the local news on A, B, C and C-B-S-N-B-C and other things, CNN and Fox News. Like why not, why are you picking?

They’re only on CBS.

Krystal Vivian: Exactly.

Shannon Allen: And why are you picking, they’re only on CBS through this platform. What about Hulu platform and Roku platform and Pluto tv? Quit trying to pick it. Let follow the eyeballs, follow the consumer. Get over that. You might never see your commercial. Get over it.

Yeah. And by the way, go to your provider like, like we can at FDS and ask them to build out a local a local customized targeted allow list.

Krystal Vivian: You

Shannon Allen: can’t do that with tv.

Krystal Vivian: No. You’re

Shannon Allen: still only on CBS cable. You have a little bit more flexibility there. But again, if only 15% of an audience is, has cable subscription.

What about the other, 75 to. 85% of consumers

Krystal Vivian: And even if you aren’t seeing your commercial, we can look at the reporting, talk to your partner about the reporting, right? Because we can tell you, okay, you had X percentage deliver on the Roku, you had X percentage deliver on peacock. You had X percentage deliver on these different platforms.

And we have the impressions. We know that these ads are being delivered. Yeah. And then we can also, we’re tracking the view throughs. We’re tracking clicks if it’s on a clickable device. So the reporting, I think, is a really big impact too.

Shannon Allen: It is. I really think the bottom line, and we’ll stop talking CT for a minute, is we know that CTV reaches three times more households than cable and linear three times more.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah.

Shannon Allen: Bottom line,

Krystal Vivian: that’s

Shannon Allen: huge. CTV offers precision targeting cable and linear cannot do. We’re delivering measurable results, the reporting we just talked about, and we have those completion rates that will crush anything on t linear TV and cable. So those are the reasons. Move your budget.

Krystal Vivian: Absolutely.

Absolutely. Let’s shift to another major consumer behavior shift that is impacting businesses and that’s search. We’re seeing a huge change with AI overviews and zero click searches. What’s happening to organic traffic in 2026? And what does that mean for businesses who have relied on traditional SEO?

Shannon Allen: This is a great question because this is gonna be a topic. You and I are gonna do a separate podcast still this month on this. Just talking about ai. It, what’s been very clear to me is when you and I started, I don’t know, two years ago. Not that we weren’t talking AI previous, but really doing more podcasts on it.

If we go back and look at our topics, Krystal, we really, we shifted our conversation, right? It started with how to think of ai, how can a business owner use it? What is it that they need, right? It shifted. Now it’s really moving into that search conversation.

Krystal Vivian: Yes.

Shannon Allen: And let’s, for our listeners that don’t think of it this way, that Zero click search really just means that a user performed a search on Google being wherever, really.

And they get their answers directly on that page. Without going to the website, so that zero click can mean you are still on Google, you do a search and you get your answer right in front of you. It can also mean that they have chat, GPT or Claude or Gemini downloaded onto their phone and they’re never doing a click because everything is living in that search.

Krystal Vivian: They’re getting their answer right there, and so we’re seeing. Traffic.

Shannon Allen: We are

Krystal Vivian: organic traffic and search traffic is down significantly.

Shannon Allen: Right now, 80% of consumers rely on what we call zero click results in at least 40% of their searches. So out of, 40% of their searches, 80% of those consumers are.

Are relying on the zero click they want they’re that they want the answer right now.

And by the way, we’re talking about different where they’re at in the buying cycle. I think if we’re talking about products or services they need, that is also dependent on that zero click.

It’s also why SEM is so valuable, because if you have a phone number in an ad, they might not ever click on the ad and then you didn’t pay for it, and your phone number shows up and they dial for you, or they click on that.

Krystal Vivian: Yes, 100%. And that’s to say the searches are still happening.

It’s just you are, they’re not getting to your website. So I think a lot of business owners think, oh, my website traffic is down 20. My search traffic is down 25% on my website. That must mean that people aren’t searching for me anymore and I’m not showing up. Yeah, no, you’re showing up, but they’re getting their answer on that on Google from the AI overview.

Exactly. They’re not getting any further, but your ad will still show up. And to your point, if it’s has your phone number or if it’s something that they are ready to make that purchase, they’re gonna click on that ad.

Shannon Allen: Yeah. In a lot of our year end meetings this year we asked clients specifically.

Are you seeing a drop in your organic? And the answer almost a hundred percent of the time was yes. And then I like to ask ’em, what is that drop? And they don’t always know that, but statistically on a low end, it’s 15, but you’re seeing more averages of a 25% organic drop, and that’s only gonna get larger, right?

Krystal Vivian: Yes.

Shannon Allen: So AI over overview is really impacting that organic, right? So that is something that business owners really need to think about is that their organic. Searches has plummeted right. And individual website experience are experiencing these click through rate drops right when overview AI overviews appear.

So we talked about this on one of our podcasts and I pulled my notes from that, but as of May of 2025, AI overviews appear for up to 47% of our searches right now, 47%. Those are big things to think about. Just that chat GP has grown, Claude has grown, Gemini has grown, but what this is really telling me is it’s continuing to make paid search more valuable than ever before.

And we have to, you as a business owner, you really have to make sure that your SEM is dialed in. And the truth is, Google is never going to let the SEM go away on Google because that is the bulk of their money. So even if we wanted to let it happen organically, Google’s never gonna let that business model happen.

Krystal Vivian: No.

Shannon Allen: One of the things that I think business owners need to realize is that paid search is gonna become what I consider like a closing channel, right? That it’s going to be closing from what you’re seeing. It’s gonna compliment each other. Google, I’m starting to see this a little bit, but I think what they’re doing is testing it out is we’re starting to see paid ads on the desktop appear above AI overviews.

Which is smart, right? That’s happening. As that organic traffic declines, paid becomes really more important for visibility than ever before. We need business owners to make sure that their SEM is very dialed in because AI, to me is more general. It’s not giving as specific as possible, kinda like a VLA, the vehicle listings that we do for auto dealers is a little bit more general. And when you’re looking for that, AI disappears. There’s no AI there. But VLA is important, right? But AI is a little bit more gentle. It doesn’t know exactly in the Google search. Now, if you’re going deeper into your ai. Claude or Chat or Gemini specifically.

It might get specific, but you have to prompt it. So your SCM should be very dialed in and not broad. And Google made these changes a couple years ago ’cause they knew this was coming, that they are really giving, they’re doing less broad matches because AI handles the broad SEM should handle more dynamic and exact.

And that, those coupled together to me is why whoever your provider is for SEM. They can’t just be on Google anymore. They’ve gotta be on both Google and Bing, and they have to be dialed in and not be so broad. Has to be very specific. So A your money goes farther and B, it compliments the ai.

Absolutely. So this kind of leads us into, the AI answer blogs and the things we’re gonna go into deeper. But every bit of content on a consumer’s. Website right now has to be dialed in so that when AI searches are happening, that they are part of that conversation, right?

Krystal Vivian: Yes. And you have to be able to answer the questions, especially in the era of.

People are asking very conversational questions to their AI assistance, to chat GPT, to Siri, to Claude, to perplexity and being able to, they wanna give that answer back very casually, but also very directly. Yep. So we’ll talk more about that in our next episode. We’ll dive a lot deeper, but the a, having, making sure that it’s not just.

That you have content on your website anymore. It’s not just making sure that you know you’re ranking on Google. In fact, in an era of zero click searches, ranking on Google is not as important. It’s being able to directly answer those questions and being making sure that you are being cited by ai. But we’ll dive a lot deeper on that in the next episode.

Shannon Allen: Yeah, one of the biggest things I could give as a strategy is what we’re gonna talk about is you need to be optimized for chat, GBT perplexity, Claude. Not just Google and before, not just Google and before everything we did. And by the way, SEO is for Google that yes, we for years have lived in this SEO world that is about Google.

And that’s change. And like you said, we’re gonna talk more about, optimizing for all ai, not just Google. And that is the biggest digital change and trend that business owners need to wrap their head around.

Krystal Vivian: Yes. And it’s huge.

Shannon Allen: It’s huge.

Krystal Vivian: It’s huge. We’ll get a whole episode on that.

Yes. So let’s talk about the, what are the biggest shifts in digital advertising spend and strategy for 2026, and where should business owners be focusing both their attention and their budgets?

Shannon Allen: So let’s talk first about we’re gonna see growth. I always hate these big numbers that sometimes I talk about, the billions.

But it really just puts things into perspective, which is. If you look back to where we’re at even just a couple years ago, 2023 was sitting at, 626 billion in just a two year period, two and a half year period. It’s expected to by the end of this year, be it 740 billion. So it grew, it grew almost 110 billion, 114 billion in that short period of time. Billion, not million, billion. Their digital, that digital marketing. So it’s coming from somewhere, I don’t think, I don’t think there’s more people spending and marketing overall. I think they’re throwing their, more people are throwing their hat into the digital ring than they’ve ever done.

And that’s where the losses are coming on. Unfortunately, tv, radio, traditional billboards, things like that. Those are still valuable. It’s still the full consumer journey, but because of technology, the consumer journey has changed dramatically than even just a couple years ago, right?

Krystal Vivian: Yes.

Shannon Allen: So we just talked about ai, but as we talk about that from a budget standpoint, in a strategy standpoint, 86% of advertisers right now are predicted to use generative AI in everything they’re doing, specifically video ad creation, right?

You and I are very aware of where our changes have gone.

We have more capabilities now than ever before, and there’s good AI videos and there’s bad AI videos, right?

Krystal Vivian: Oh,

Shannon Allen: yes. You need to make sure that you’re not just the average Joe out there going, oh, I can do this myself, because we can all spot a bad AI video.

Krystal Vivian: Yes.

And chances are with the way that the pricing works on these generative AI tools, business owners who are trying to do it themselves and are trying to find an AI video that is cheap or free.

One, it’s very obvious, and two, it is the same video that they are giving other people within your industry. I saw a lot on social media At the end of the year, a lot of people were making these AI videos of Santa Claus doing things. It looked very cheap and very generic, and it was like, just upload your logo and you’ll put it into our video.

It’s like that’s not, yes, it’s a video, but just having the video by itself.

Shannon Allen: Yeah.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah. You want it to be professional and custom to your business.

Shannon Allen: A hundred percent. So on top of that, this is what I find really interesting was that in 2026, nearly 40% of video ads will involve generative ai.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah. In some

Shannon Allen: way.

Yeah, in some way. So let’s talk about another, another topic that business owners need to think about when it comes to strategy for digital this year is, again, creative quality is king. So as we jump on that video bandwagon, we really need to remember that we, you can’t let that suffer. So creativity along with content that all ties together is still gotta be number one of what you’re doing.

Yes. Another topic that we’ve talked about in years past of the digital trends is the first party data, it’s continues to be critical. It’s really part of that attribution conversation. You wanna gather more first party than ever before. You wanna make sure they’re opting in so you can use that data to track, right?

So that brand integrity is going to give a very high return if you do it right. Programmatic growth. So the word programmatic isn’t always understood by everybody. Think of programmatic, whether that is programmatic display, programmatic audio, programmatic video, which is CTV. Think of that as it’s a big auction, right?

Where we gather all these people and then we target them the right way. So I envision this really large auction and it’s go over there for your audio, go over there for your display. Everybody go over there and now we’re only gonna put you into groups based on what your needs are. So programmatic is a valuable word.

I just talked about first party. Very important. It will couple what is third party, and that’s programmatic, right? It’s this really big auction that we need a lot of data to analyze properly. And by the way, the best way I can analyze it is the way that consumers are buying and searching. Their location, everything on their phones, and it’s still has to adhere to privacy laws.

We are living in a cookie list world except for Google. ’cause I don’t think they’re ever gonna change, but. Honestly, programmatic in 2026 will account for 90% of all digital display ad spending. Just, that’s huge. Nobody wants, you want that programmatic buy that’s, that is very valuable in display.

Okay.

Krystal Vivian: It’s the premium one.

Shannon Allen: It is the premium. And then let’s talk about from a trend standpoint, why the budgets are moving. So we already talked about. CTV and why you should be shifting this stat really surprised me. 36% of advertisers are redirecting dollars from social to CTV.

Krystal Vivian: Ooh.

Shannon Allen: Now let’s think about that for the last couple years.

Social paid social. This is truly Facebook advertising, YouTube advertising, consumers reels, people that pay to put their paid ad out there. They’re starting to take some of that content and realize the value of not limiting yourself to just living on a social platform.

Krystal Vivian: Just a walled garden.

Yeah.

Shannon Allen: Yes. So that that, it surprised me, but it didn’t you’re gonna see, it started with TikTok and then all of a sudden Instagram reels and Facebook reels, and if you weren’t a TikTok person, there’s still, people say to me, I don’t watch TikTok, but they’re obsessed with their Facebook reels.

Don’t realize they’re watching. That you’re watching is TikTok.

Krystal Vivian: It’s TikTok. It’s just a different thing. But that’s really interesting too though. My reaction is that makes sense then because they’re just posting that same content that they would run an ad for as their organic content. That’s not gonna work for your organic content strategy.

But in terms of reaching a broader audience, that might be more successful with A CTV if you’re looking, especially if your goal is brand awareness, moving your budget there, but still using that as your content.

Shannon Allen: Yeah, it makes sense.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah.

Shannon Allen: So I’ll close this up with what I would consider the channel leaders this year in 2026 based on digital trends, CTV.

Remember we, we have a consumer journey that we’re going after from a customized strategy with every client. Based on that, we’re gonna go find them wherever. Something else to keep in mind, if you have one vendor that you’re using for SEM and one vendor for CTV and one for display, it might be a convoluted strategy.

So I’m not saying put all your eggs in one basket, but when it comes to digital. The way that we like to do it, we find out what your needs is, are. We find out what your top products and services, and we create a digital channel strategy to reach those consumers. So you give us your goals and then I say, okay, I’m gonna reach them at the upper funnel through display.

I’m gonna reach it through your social management. I’m gonna reach it through CTV, I’m gonna reach it through and end it with SEM, and then I’m gonna continue with my social manager to keep that loyalty loop going, right? To keep your brand going once you become one of my customers. So top leaders, predictions, again, CTV, more of the AI information, SEM and programmatic display.

So good news is we sell all those things. So I’m not just saying this, I will tell you this, I, we don’t live a lot in the email marketing. Email marketing still has value when done right? And so that is part of that. Consumer journey once you brought them in as a consumer, it leads the way with first party data.

So don’t forget about that element either.

Krystal Vivian: Yes. Especially when you talked about the loyalty loop, and I think the email marketing plays a really important role there in that repurchasing. But that is, it is a little bit separate, for sure.

Shannon Allen: Yeah. But it’s still valuable.

Krystal Vivian: Still very valuable. Okay.

We always wrap it up with ROI, and I’ve got two questions or two parts of this. Okay. The first part of ROI is attribution. Why is tracking the actual consumer journey from first touch all the way to conversion, why is that so critical in 2026?

Shannon Allen: So it’s become another buzzword to me, attribution, ROI.

One of the things that I am seeing personally, and I think a numbers lower than this, but one of the stats I found was that only 30% of CMOs a chief marketing officer feels confident in their ability to measure ROI across all channels. So I was just in a meeting yesterday with a client, specifically in the banking industry.

And they really wanna hold us to ROI, and we’re doing a really good job with it. We’re really trying to connect the dots. What I had to explain to them is, I need something from you. In order to give you that attribution, I need a couple things. First and foremost, in digital. From a privacy standpoint, if you share with me your first party data, and I can target them through my multiple channels.

I am able to show attribution because now they’ve opted in because they said, yes, you can work and target us. Your first party. The permission has been given. I can target them. And by the way, they’re already your, they’re already your client, they’re already your consumer, they’re already your customer.

So I can target them, but let’s keep in mind of the strategy. We want to target them. So the credit unit’s a little bit easier. They’re a member. Because they have their mortgage with you, but they don’t have a credit card with you or they don’t have a mortgage, or they don’t have an auto loan with you.

So I can go down that trip, the drip effect and go after more angles and I can show that Joe Smith that is already one of your members also, we touched them with this and they closed it here. I can show that if you share that data with me. But when it comes to new business, new clients, new members, any of these customers that we’re trying to reach for the first time, I can’t just hand over and say, here’s Krystal Vivian, and she did A, B, C, and D.

Unless she’s opted in for that. Okay?

Krystal Vivian: Yes.

Shannon Allen: But do we need to know that Krystal Vivian did it, or do I just need to know that from your campaign, I brought you to the website and you made this action and we can connect the dots as best as possible? Yes, I can get better at that. But here’s what I need to know from you.

I need to know when I, what’s your average close ratio when I bring ’em to your website? Do you know how many of those consumers, once I bring ’em to that page. Are actually converting. I need to know once they converted on the website, how many of those become closes purchases. Unless you’re an e-commerce company, it’s very difficult for me to track it.

I can do that all day long with a point of sale, but if you’re not e-commerce with a point of sale system attached to it, there’s no permission given to know that Krystal Vivian did that step.

Krystal Vivian: Correct.

Shannon Allen: So we have to move to the best thing we can do, which is somewhat of. A scaled assumption, right? And people are like I want a real number.

Let’s be clear. Even the best statistical mathematic people out there are not working with actual numbers. They’re creating a scale of a group, right? If. Eli Lilly, when they’re testing their latest weight loss drug. So there’s a new one out. It’s better than Zepbound, I’ve heard. And they’re in testing right now.

They’re creating a sample test group. That they’re then gonna turn over. So there might be. 200 people testing, that’s probably high, to be honest. They might sample 200 and then they’re gonna tell, we’re gonna make an assumption that this is gonna be the sample for everybody. Yes. It’s very similar in digital marketing, is I should be able to know that on an average, your mortgage loans close at this rate.

The value assigned to them is this, and this is their buying cycle. And so attribution should be part of every digital conversation. It should be part of every marketing conversation, but digital gets held to a different standard. So what I would suggest and to get to the ROI. We really need to be looking at business owners is what channels are you seeing that are actually driving the revenue?

What’s an upper funnel? What’s a lower funnel? We need to know the true customer acquisition from you, so we will share you what, with what we can do. We need your help. Understanding those levels, right? We need to know what that is, and that’s gonna be a huge part of it.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah. And those are unique to each business in each industry.

Beyond tracking the customer journeys, what else? Yeah. What internal business metrics do companies need to actually know in order to make those smart marketing decisions in 2026?

Shannon Allen: For sure any product that you sell, we need to know your, the lifetime value. What is the lifetime value? And what I mean by that is if I’m buying tires tomorrow. That’s an easy one. That’s a purchase today I don’t necessarily need, but I need to know the buying cycle. So I need to know lifetime value of a product and the buying cycle.

So if we use the example of tires, are those good for four years, five years? How often do they come in? Mortgage is another great example. A mortgage. Are you gonna measure a year? One profit? Or the lifetime value. And by the way, in a mortgage, it’s not a 30 year value. If you sign a 30 year mortgage, an average 30 year mortgage is a average of seven years before you buy another house or switch up, right?

So I need to know that lifetime value. Again, I need to know your buying cycles. Using the credit union. Again, it might be a longer buying cycle for a mortgage than it is for a credit card. Credit card is usually done pretty quickly. So what are your buying cycles with your business? Any conversion rates that you know, because if I, if you don’t know ’em and aren’t measuring them, then I, the best we can do is use national statistics or regional statistics.

So if we bring ’em to your website, that’s my job is to bring ’em to the website. I need to ask you, out of all your website visitors, how many of those become leads, and do you know that once they become, once they’re leads, how many of those actually close as customers? How many are uniques for first time and how many are repeat that are coming to your website?

And then really that what is the analysis of recency and frequency, right? How often with customers that value is there? If you gave me a buying cycle and a li and an, and gave me a product value and an estimated conversion, I can work with that. Yeah. But I can’t work with nothing. And at the very least, as a group, you need to decide upfront what’s the magic number we’re gonna use.

Maybe we know how many units sold for a car dealer every month. How many of those are you gonna give us credit for? Is it 10%? Is it 5%? Is it 20%? ’cause you’re not doing any other marketing. And give us a conservative number and we can at least use that to tie back to what you’re spending.

Krystal Vivian: Yes. And then that makes it attribution a lot easier then too.

Shannon Allen: So much easier. And, knowing your churn, like I know my attribution churn, like people should know those things. Like I do giggle a little bit when I’m in meetings and these really big companies don’t know their, not only their lifetime value, but what’s their attrition rate? I know it at our business, I know what every product we sell, what my profit margin is.

I’m surprised. I bet your CFO knows it,

Krystal Vivian: right? Yeah. I was gonna say, because I would think that if you’re trying to track the success of your investment in marketing or even just trying to track the success of your business, you need to know those things.

You do. You need to know how much money you make on your top products and services.

Shannon Allen: Yeah. It is alarming sometimes to me, the percentage of our clients that don’t know that. But I truly think the reason Krystal is because for years, marketing is the unmeasurable. Thing that you do, right?

Yes. And so when you live in TV and radio and newspaper, for years back, we couldn’t measure, when I worked in newspaper, I had a little bit better because I’d go to my auto dealer and I’d go and he’d have his ad hanging up the wall with all the cars crossed off that you sold. That was as close to what I knew what attribution was as ever before.

But I think what happens is we’ve, it’s been untouchable, but that doesn’t mean we don’t wanna. Come up with a system that we all agree upon, and I think business would be surprised that their chief financial officer or their controller might really appreciate that because they can, at least they do work in what somebody might call an assumption because it’s a sample test.

It’s why we do a budget at the beginning of the year that we predict what might not, what. Will happen to help us predict cash flow. That’s a prediction that’s made up. So take that same thinking when you’re doing your budgets every year and apply it to attribution with your marketing and come up with a formula that it we can agree upon that will test out.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense. So

Shannon Allen: I know we covered a lot today but I think we’re gonna take some of these pieces now as we do every year and just make ’em their own podcast. So this one was a little bit longer. It’s gonna lead into a training that I’ll do with our team, but I think for business owners as we kick off the year, these are just some things I really would hope they think about as what I call digital trends that have continued to be evolving in the last couple years.

Krystal Vivian: Yes, absolutely. There’s a lot to dive in here too, but I think overall, making sure that you’re doing something with CTV, making sure that you are talking to your partner about how you’re showing up in AI search and how that’s impacting you. Making sure that you are talking about. What’s going on with attribution and knowing your ROI and your numbers and being able to work closely with your partner and hold each other accountable.

I think that’s really powerful and if business owners can do that in 2026, then we’ll be set up for a lot of success.

Shannon Allen: We will and I would encourage any listener to take, go to the drawing board and say, what is my consumer journey? What is my average consumer? And don’t take it from your standpoint.

Ask somebody. Because as a business owner, your journey is gonna be different ’cause you know your products inside and out. Yes. Or your services. So start there. And what I would say is the winners this year aren’t gonna be the ones that are spending the most on marketing or ads. They’re gonna be the ones that they know their numbers.

They’re tracking the consumer journey and they’re investing in the channels that drive real ROI because you’ve tracked it and now you know it for your business. Yes. Be very customized when it comes to attribution and channels this year.

Krystal Vivian: Yes, absolutely.

Shannon Allen: I think we covered a lot, so thank you, Krystal.

This was fun.

Krystal Vivian: Thank you, Shannon. This was great.

Shannon Allen: It was great. Thanks to our listeners and tune into our next episode of Digital Marketing, ROI.

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