LUMA Partners CEO Terry Kawaja and partner Conor McKenna told the investment bank's Digital Marketing Summit in New York City on November 9 that AI is changing ad tech on two fronts: how technology selects and delivers ads, and how consumers discover and buy products, Digiday reported. Digiday also reported that ad tech mergers and acquisitions have been steadily increasing as 2026 draws to a close.
On the ad side, the LUMA speakers said competitive advantage is likely to move from managing campaign delivery to making better real-time decisions about signals, creative and placement. "The workflow moat begins to evaporate with the AI technology that is coming out," McKenna said. Kawaja said efficiency is a 10% incremental improvement while effectiveness "could make a 10x difference," and that "decisioning coupled with unique signal" will separate winners from losers and promote consolidation. Several presenters forecast a more competitive market and potential consolidation, according to Digiday.
On the consumer side, the speakers said AI assistants could bring research, discovery and comparison into a single interface, and expect people to delegate tasks to agents rather than hand over decisions for now. They said consumer trust will be essential if advertising becomes part of these experiences.
Ravi Patel, co-founder and CEO of SWYM.ai, told Digiday that Google, Meta and Amazon still make impression-level decisions inside their own systems, so unified media platforms can manage "the 'what' and the 'how much'" but not "which impression."