StackAdapt has opened its 2026 Innovation Forum with a focus on how artificial intelligence is changing advertising workflows across planning, creative, audience strategy, activation and measurement. The global virtual event is showcasing the company’s latest AI capabilities, including Ivy Studio, while bringing industry speakers into discussions around the changing role of AI in advertising.
The event comes as advertising teams contend with increasingly fragmented campaign workflows. StackAdapt is positioning connected AI as a way to bring those processes closer together rather than applying automation to isolated tasks. Its Innovation Forum is being broadcast across North America, EMEA and APAC, with on-demand programming scheduled from October 1.
How StackAdapt Is Applying AI
The central technology highlighted at the forum is Ivy Studio, StackAdapt’s AI-first advertising workspace. The platform brings planning, forecasting, analysis, optimization and campaign execution into a single environment, using campaign, audience, creative and performance context to inform recommendations and actions.
StackAdapt says Ivy Studio can help marketers discover audiences, build campaign forecasts, analyze performance and identify optimization opportunities. The platform is also connected to StackAdapt’s broader advertising infrastructure, allowing users to move from analysis toward campaign actions without switching between multiple workflows.
The company has previously described Ivy Studio as an evolution of its AI assistant, with capabilities spanning campaign planning, execution and analysis. It has also introduced an MCP Server that can connect StackAdapt campaign intelligence with compatible external AI tools.
Impact on Advertisers and Agencies
For advertisers, the significance is less about automating one advertising task and more about connecting the decisions surrounding a campaign. Planning data can inform audience strategy, performance analysis can surface optimization opportunities, and creative information can become part of the same operating context.
Agencies face a similar challenge as campaign execution increasingly spans multiple channels and datasets. StackAdapt’s platform supports programmatic campaigns across channels including CTV, video, display, native, audio and DOOH, while its AI layer is designed to work across those workflows.
This approach could reduce manual context switching, although the effectiveness of AI-assisted advertising still depends on data quality, campaign governance and human oversight.
AI and the Programmatic Ecosystem
The broader advertising market is moving toward AI systems that participate in planning, targeting and optimization rather than simply generating content. StackAdapt’s own 2026 programmatic research reports that 75% of surveyed marketers expect programmatic budgets to increase in 2026, while 84% reported stronger year-over-year performance. The research covers 484 senior marketers and StackAdapt platform data from more than 6,000 advertisers, making it company-sponsored research rather than an industry-wide benchmark.
StackAdapt’s approach reflects this shift by treating AI as an intelligence layer connecting campaign information with execution. Its platform currently describes Ivy Studio as supporting planning, analysis, optimization and execution within one workspace.
Market Landscape
AI adoption is increasingly extending across the advertising lifecycle. Industry priorities now include audience decisioning, creative development, measurement, forecasting and campaign execution.
StackAdapt’s earlier 2026 product expansion included AI Video Builder for video and CTV creative, alongside Ivy Studio and cross-channel attribution capabilities.
The Innovation Forum therefore represents a continuation of a broader product strategy rather than an isolated AI announcement.
Strategic Outlook
The strategic question for enterprise advertising teams is shifting from whether AI can automate individual tasks to how AI systems can operate across interconnected campaign workflows.
For DSPs and advertising platforms, this creates a competitive focus on contextual intelligence, integration, transparency and controlled execution. StackAdapt’s development of Ivy Studio, external AI connectivity and cross-channel campaign infrastructure illustrates one approach to that transition.
The longer-term value will depend on how reliably these systems translate advertising data into useful decisions while keeping marketers in control of campaign execution and governance.
Top Insights
- StackAdapt’s Innovation Forum focuses on AI’s role across the advertising lifecycle.
- Ivy Studio connects planning, analysis, optimization and campaign execution.
- The platform uses campaign and performance context rather than generic AI recommendations.
- StackAdapt is also connecting advertising intelligence to external AI workflows through MCP.
- The development reflects the broader movement toward AI-assisted programmatic orchestration.
Get in touch with our Adtech experts
