2026 Is the Perfect Time to Recommit to the Open Web

Mintegral’s Phoena Pang explores how Gen AI, automation, and better ROI are shifting budgets away from expensive walled gardens.

For years, advertisers gravitated toward walled gardens because they offered simplicity, predictability, and turnkey performance. That led to a lack of focus on the open web, which also felt complex in comparison, given how many publishers there are across platforms. 

But in a climate where budgets are tightening and efficiency is paramount, marketers are rediscovering the fundamental strengths of the broader web: lower costs, diversified reach, and room to innovate without paying a premium for controlled environments. 

With continued uncertainty in the global economy, marketers are scrutinizing every dollar. While walled gardens are still valuable, the increased demand in properties like Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and Amazon due to their audiences and strong first-party data has increased CPMs and CPCs.

In some respects, they’re victims of their own success, which means increased costs at a time when budgets must stretch further. 

The Open Internet, once seen as too fragmented to manage at scale, is becoming an increasingly essential channel for advertisers prioritizing ROI. It provides diverse inventory sources, flexible bidding models, and testing and scaling, as always. 

There’s a huge opportunity considering U.S. consumers spend 59% of their online time on the open internet, but only 48% of advertisers’ money is spent there, according to the Trade Desk.

Advertisers are rediscovering that it can deliver competitive results at a fraction of the cost, particularly when campaigns are designed to drive specific brand- or sales-driven actions rather than broad reach.

As measurement transparency improves and attribution models become more sophisticated, the Open Internet’s value as a performance engine — with lower CPMs and greater agility — becomes clearer. In 2026, more advertisers will treat it not as a supplementary channel but as a central pillar of their budget-saving strategy.

Here are the major Open Internet trends advertisers should watch for.

Generative AI drives new opportunities

The Open Internet creates complexity — and that’s by design. From dozens of formats and specs produced by thousands of publishers, there’s different aspects to contend with at every level. While the industry coalesced around some standards, there have always been nuances at the last mile. But a return to the Open Web coincides nicely with the rise of generative AI as a force multiplier for brand creative. 

Generative AI makes it possible to create additional content at scale, especially for global campaigns. Everything from ad copy that can be easily translated into different languages and format-specific variants and images that can be altered to fit into local customs is now immediately possible. 

AI platforms are also increasingly able to produce credible short-form video, evidenced by this Coca-Cola Christmas ad. In short, AI can create or alter content in mere minutes that would have been prohibitively expensive even three years ago.

Teams that once avoided the Open Internet because of the high toll of creative production are now finding it far more approachable and far more cost-effective.

Commerce media strengthens the Open Internet’s value proposition

One of the most promising subsets of the Open Internet is retail media. The Open Internet is quietly benefitting from the growth of this powerful medium, which increasingly offers 

mid-sized marketplaces, DTC ecosystems, and specialized vertical retail platforms that offer high-intent audiences outside the largest walled gardens. 

Many retailers with mature retail media operations are so successful and growing so much that they’ve exhausted their inventory and have to branch out to drive further revenues beyond their owned properties. Furthermore, several major commerce companies that have their own DSPs are branching out to buy inventory on other publishers. It’s a huge opportunity for growth, especially for retailers that have grown past their own owned properties. 

Automation reduces operational friction

AI and automation not only produce great creative gains, they also accelerate what media buyers can do with targeting and campaign management. 

Campaign management across the broader web has historically required manual intervention at multiple steps. In 2026, antiquated labor-intensive models of work will increasingly be replaced by AI systems capable of orchestrating operational tasks from end to end. Things like budget, pacing, segmentation, and reporting will all be automated. Intelligent systems can adjust bids, spot underperforming segments, identify and reduce audience overlap, and rotate creative if fatigue sets in. Organizations can do more with smaller teams or scale their expertise to pursue new markets, all without sacrificing performance.

Cross-channel intelligence becomes a competitive advantage

AI-powered, cross-channel optimization is a huge opportunity for advertisers. They can analyze performance across publishers, formats, devices, and contextual signals in real-time and make decisions on how to scale up and down individual types of creative, targets, and publishers depending on what performance metrics are telling them.

Thanks to AI, advertisers can better view channels and identify combinations that drive the highest incremental lift. With better data unification and real-time learning loops, brands will be able to move beyond static budget allocations. They can continuously shift spend toward areas where marginal returns are highest, guided by AI that evaluates thousands of micro-signals across the open web. This level of intelligence, once exclusive to walled gardens, is quickly becoming accessible to open-internet buyers, making the broader web more strategically viable.

The new-and-improved Open Internet

In 2026, advertisers can start viewing the Open Internet not as a fragmented marketplace, but an interconnected medium where efficiency, flexibility, and scale can all be harnessed. 

While budgetary pressure may cause marketers to give the open web a second look, there are far more benefits to allocating spend there than to merely escape the high costs of walled gardens. 

Generative AI is removing historical barriers to creative and operational complexity. Commerce media is expanding beyond traditional retail giants. And automation is making cross-channel management not only possible but highly effective.

Together, these forces position the Open Internet as one of the most dynamic and cost-efficient environments for performance marketing in 2026, and a cornerstone of the modern media mix.

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