Marketing budgets rise, AI reshapes publishing and identity fights scam ads

Welcome to the July Spotlight, your monthly deep dive into the latest developments shaping the future of adtech and digital marketing.

With the flurry of Cannes firmly in the rearview mirror and mid-year strategy reviews under way, the industry is entering the second half of 2026 with a mixture of cautious optimism and focused recalibration. From budget revisions and new publisher metrics to the pressing struggle for ecosystem trust, this month’s top stories highlight one undeniable truth: as automation accelerates, verifiable quality and trusted identity matter more than ever.

CMO confidence rebounds, but budget competition reaches fever pitch

Marketing spend is picking up the pace. According to the latest Q2 IPA Bellwether report, UK companies are revising their marketing budgets upwards to near two-year highs, driven by stronger investment in video, direct marketing, and live events. Following a sluggish start to the year, CMOs are feeling more confident about their own brand growth, even while remaining clear-eyed about the broader, ongoing economic headwinds.

However, increased spending doesn’t mean brands are throwing money around recklessly. With budget growth heavily concentrated in high-impact formats, the competition for genuine consumer attention is fierce.

Rebounding budgets are welcome news, but higher spend places a premium on efficiency. When digital budgets expand, media wastage through unverified inventory or bot traffic usually climbs right along with them. Marketers who anchor their expanded budgets in verified, first-party audience signals rather than broad-brush probabilistic guesswork will ensure every extra pound actually reaches real, high-value humans.

See our firsthand comments on the impact of the Middle East on the latest IPA Bellwether findings here.

AI visibility becomes publishers’ newest currency as search traffic shifts

As generative AI answer engines and zero-click search experiences choke traditional referral traffic to news and media sites, publishers are facing double-digit drops in open-web ad supply. In response, digiday reports that the publishers are pioneering a new performance metric: AI visibility. The latest version of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’, top global media houses are actively packaging up their “Generative Engine Optimisation” (GEO) insights to show brands how authoritative media content shapes how LLMs cite, surface, and recommend products.

At the same time, publishers are deliberately trimming ad clutter and focusing on raising yield (eCPMs) on their premium inventory to offset declining impression volumes.

The era of relying on infinite pageviews and programmatic volumes is winding down. As traffic flows change, publishers cannot afford to leave their audience value to chance. Monopolising on high-attention inventory requires publisher-side identity infrastructure that accurately draws on consented, real-user signals in real time. Maximising yield on fewer, higher-quality impressions is only possible when you can prove to buyers that every impression is 100% above board and delivering the value.

Scam ads surge, making identity the primary line of defense

Fraudulent advertising and scam ads are reaching critical levels, damaging brand reputations and draining consumer trust across search and social platforms. Regulators like Ofcom are stepping in with tough new proposed rules under the Online Safety Act, pushing major platforms to implement mandatory advertiser verification, proactive fraud detection, and stricter account controls.

In a feature lead, Marketing Week highlighted how brands are increasingly concerned that their messaging will appear alongside fake ads — or worse, that bad actors will hijack their brand identity entirely.

Identity has historically been framed purely as a targeting mechanism, but it is fast becoming the industry’s most critical and reliable safety layer. Fighting ad fraud and fake inventory is a continual challenge as the bad actors behind fraudulent clicks are tireless in their approaches to find chinks in the armour of current infrastructures. Embedding true, fully consented and securely telco-backed verification within the supply chain is a vital piece of the puzzle for advertisers and publishers to eliminate bad bots, safeguard brand equity, and rebuild consumer trust.

More from Novatiq

Navigating the post-cookie landscape shouldn’t feel like a compromise between scale and privacy. If you’re looking for actionable insights on how telco-backed, privacy-first identity can help you maximise inventory yield or protect media spend against non-human traffic, explore our latest resources on our website.

Our recent deep dive into building consent-first, deterministic audience verification across the open web is live on our blog now.