DMEXCO 2026: AI Commerce, Retail Media and the Future of Marketing

DMEXCO 2026: Where and When the Conference Took Place

On September 23–24, 2026, DMEXCO (Digital Marketing Exposition & Conference), one of Europe's largest conferences and exhibitions dedicated to digital marketing, advertising technologies, e-commerce, and the digital economy, took place in Cologne, Germany.

The event brings together technology companies, advertising platforms, agencies, brands, and e-commerce representatives. In 2026, the program included more than 500 sessions across 17 stages, and its central theme was Scaling Intelligence, the transition from individual experiments with artificial intelligence to its systematic application in business.

Source: DMEXCO 2026 official highlights.

Key Takeaways from DMEXCO 2026

The conference's central idea was that artificial intelligence has moved beyond being merely a tool for improving productivity. It is gradually changing the structure of digital marketing itself: how products are discovered, how advertising is purchased, how creative assets are produced, how agencies operate, and how brands interact with customers.

Major discussion topics included Agentic AI, AI Commerce, Retail Media, advertising automation, generative content production, the changing role of advertising agencies, and new ways of measuring advertising effectiveness.

Alongside technological opportunities, participants paid considerable attention to AI's limitations: user trust, algorithmic transparency, the accuracy of advertising materials, and maintaining human control over strategic decisions.

A general takeaway from DMEXCO 2026 is that competitive advantages accrue not simply to companies using more AI tools, but to those capable of integrating these tools into real business processes and measuring the additional commercial value they create. This is an interpretation of the overall conference agenda, not a quote from an individual speaker.

Source: DMEXCO.

Agentic AI and AI Commerce: A New Model of E-Commerce

One of the central topics at DMEXCO 2026 was the changing customer journey in e-commerce.

The traditional model assumes that buyers independently search for products, visit websites, compare offers, and place orders. Agentic Commerce involves delegating some of these actions to AI agents.

Such systems could potentially explore product assortments, compare specifications, check prices, build shopping carts, and perform certain actions on users' behalf.

This changes the competitive environment. For a brand, appearing in search results is no longer the only consideration; the likelihood of being included in AI recommendations also becomes important.

The presentation addressed how AI agents interact with online store infrastructure, differences in commerce platforms' approaches, and how e-commerce businesses can prepare for agent-driven purchases. In particular, it explored why AI-driven product discovery is advancing faster than complete transactions inside AI interfaces, and what decisions merchants need to make to remain accessible through new commerce channels.

Markus Caspari, Head of Performance Marketing at Dentsu Germany, offered another perspective.

His presentation focused on the actual state of AI Commerce, its prospects across industries, and the gap between marketing promises and technological maturity.

For advertisers, the practical takeaway is the need to develop structured product data, make catalogs accessible to automated systems, and build brand presence in AI Search without assuming that AI agents have already replaced traditional e-commerce.

Program source: DMEXCO conference.

Retail Media: From Marketplace Advertising to an Integrated Commerce Ecosystem

Retail Media is expanding beyond sponsored products and advertising within online stores. Integrated models combining onsite advertising, offsite placements, and digital displays in physical stores are becoming increasingly important.

Retailers use their own purchase and customer behavior data to develop audiences, while brands gain additional ways to connect advertising with commercial results.

However, the growth of Retail Media Networks creates standardization challenges: different platforms use their own definitions of audiences, attribution, reach, and advertising effectiveness.

In his presentation, Knapp discussed the main developments in the European Retail and Commerce Media market and current market indicators.

The topic was also covered in the panel The AI Revolution in Retail Media: Shaping the Next Era of Consumer Engagement and Commerce, featuring Georg Schmitz (Schwarz Digits), Roxanne van Duijn (Google), Luise Weiss (idealo), and Alexander Steenbakkers-Noffke (BVDW).

Participants examined how AI recommendations affect retail advertising, changes in product discovery, and the need for transparent measurement standards in agentic scenarios.

For performance marketing, this makes it important to measure Retail Media not only through advertising clicks, but also through incremental sales and the results of customer interactions with brands across multiple channels.

Program source: DMEXCO conference.

AI Automation: The Changing Business Model of Advertising Agencies

Automation increasingly covers campaign preparation, media planning, bid management, data analysis, creative production, and reporting. These changes also affect relationships between agencies and advertisers.

Where a significant share of agency services once involved repetitive operational tasks, strategy, data integration, experimentation, and the measurement of commercial outcomes are now coming to the forefront.

Representatives of major agency groups discussed changes to operating models, AI's effect on agency teams, new client requirements, and evolving employee skills. The agenda also addressed the tension between greater productivity and preserving creativity, trust, and the long-term value of agency services.

The discussion covered how responsibilities are being redistributed among brands, agencies, and AI systems as routine marketing tasks become automated.

The central question is not only which tasks can be handed over to AI, but also who is responsible for the quality of decisions, the reliability of results, and the consequences of automation.

Program source: DMEXCO conference.

AI Search and Brand Discovery: How Brands Enter AI Recommendations

AI systems increasingly participate in product research, offer comparisons, and supplier selection. This creates an additional stage in the customer journey between recognizing a need and visiting a website.

Consumers may receive a shortlist of products or companies directly in a generative response. A brand omitted from these recommendations risks being left out of the initial consideration set.

For marketers, this means expanding traditional SEO efforts toward Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), managing brand presence in external sources, and improving structured data quality.

The session focused on how AI agents change brand discovery, why recommendations are becoming an area of competition, and the importance of structured, reliable company information. The program emphasized the distinction between how a person perceives a brand and how an AI system evaluates it when generating recommendations.

The discussion covered product and user signals, AI Decisioning, engagement across funnel stages, and measuring incremental business impact.

AI Visibility monitoring must be supplemented with web analytics, brand-demand research, and experimental assessment of incrementality: traditional clicks do not always reflect the influence of AI recommendations.

Program source: DMEXCO conference.

AI Creative Production: Mass-Generating Ads While Preserving Quality

Generative AI reduces production costs for advertising images, videos, scripts, localized materials, and different ad variations.

Yet the technical ability to generate hundreds of assets does not mean producing an equally large number of new and effective advertising ideas. Brands must preserve recognition, originality, and communication quality when similar generative models are widely used.

Participants discussed creative quality when AI generation becomes widely accessible and ways to avoid uniformity in content.

The workshop focused on creating workflows that combine audience data, brand materials, competitive intelligence, human decisions, and automated advertising asset production.

For performance marketing, this means evaluating cost per approved creative, the speed of hypothesis testing, and experiment results rather than simply counting the number of ads produced.

Program source: DMEXCO conference.

Brand Safety, Trust, and Transparency in AI Advertising

The growth of AI-generated content increases risks related to the accuracy of advertising claims, the use of synthetic images, and consumer trust.

Generative systems can create realistic people, product demonstrations, and ads without a traditional production process. But the technical ability to produce an asset does not mean consumers will perceive it as trustworthy.

Participants examined how transparency and labeling of AI-generated content relate to consumer trust, brand perception, and communication effectiveness. The program included empirical research by advertisers.

Brands need to incorporate AI creative reviews into their regular advertising approval processes: checking the accuracy of product images, advertising promises, and the use of synthetic characters.

Program source: DMEXCO conference.

Attention Metrics: Why the Quality of Advertising Contact Matters More Than Impression Volume

As automatically generated content grows, reach and impression figures become insufficient for assessing advertising contact quality. An ad may technically register an impression without attracting a person's attention.

For this reason, the industry is examining placement context, advertising environment quality, and audience attention.

The presentation addressed how the growth of AI content changes the value of real-world advertising contacts and why physical advertising environments retain competitive characteristics. It considered out-of-home advertising and Digital Out-of-Home as channels that combine physical context, addressability, and audience trust.

Attention Metrics do not replace Conversion Rate, CPA, or ROAS, but they can supplement analytics, especially for campaigns focused on demand generation and brand awareness.

Program source: DMEXCO conference.

DMEXCO 2026 Takeaways: AI Remains the Central Topic of the Marketing Industry

DMEXCO 2026 continued the year's main trend: artificial intelligence remains the central topic of major international conferences and industry discussions about the future of marketing, advertising, and e-commerce.

A similar agenda was visible at CES 2026 in Las Vegas, where AI agents and the automation of advertising processes were discussed; at Cannes Lions 2026, where particular attention was paid to the interaction between AI and human creativity; and at Advertising Week New York 2026, where AI-driven Brand Discovery, Agentic Commerce, and the transformation of the advertising industry were examined.

At the same time, the substance of these discussions has changed noticeably compared with previous years. Where the main focus used to be on the capabilities of generative models and experiments with new tools, in 2026 questions of scaling, economic efficiency, restructuring business processes, and responsibility for decisions made by AI systems came to the forefront.

DMEXCO, with its central theme of Scaling Intelligence, provided further confirmation of this shift. Artificial intelligence was discussed not as an isolated technology area, but as a factor simultaneously changing e-commerce, advertising buying, content production, search behavior, and the organization of agency work.

Meanwhile, the industry discussion is becoming more critical. Alongside the opportunities of automation, questions of trust, transparency, AI content accuracy, and the ability of new technologies to deliver measurable commercial value are increasingly being raised.

Thus, DMEXCO 2026 reflects a broader consensus across industry forums this year: AI is becoming part of the basic infrastructure of marketing, but its practical value is determined not by the scale of adoption, but by the quality of its application and real results.

Sources

• DMEXCO 2026 — Official Highlights
• DMEXCO — Conference Program
• McKinsey — Cannes Lions 2026 Takeaways
• Marketing Dive — Advertising Week New York 2026
• PMG — CES 2026 Takeaways