Adtech and Martech are Being Rebuilt: DMEXCO 2026 Wants to Show Companies What Comes Next
- 6 hours ago
- 3 min read
Free of charge visitor tickets: Marketing technology is entering a new phase. Third-party cookies are losing relevance, AI is moving into everyday workflows, and customer data is becoming more valuable while also becoming harder to manage. At the same time, brands need to stay visible across search, social, commerce, streaming and increasingly AI-driven platforms. The question is no longer whether businesses need more technology, but whether the technology they have actually works together.
by Archie Marshall || 27 August 2026
The marketing stack is changing
Digital marketing has never lacked tools. What has changed is the environment in which those tools operate. Generative AI is automating content, personalisation and campaign planning, privacy requirements are reshaping data strategies, and the growing number of customer touchpoints is making the journey harder to understand.
These challenges are at the centre of the World of Tech at DMEXCO 2026, which brings together technology providers and marketing, digital, data and IT decision makers. Rather than simply showcasing new products, the focus is on how businesses can use technology to solve practical problems: reaching audiences without relying on third-party cookies, connecting data across systems, automating the right processes and building an effective AI strategy.
Adtech is moving beyond the cookie
Programmatic advertising, automated media buying and data driven optimisation are already established. The infrastructure behind them, however, is changing rapidly. Cookieless and privacy first targeting, retail and commerce media, AI powered campaign optimisation, connected TV and new measurement and attribution models are becoming increasingly important.
First-party data, contextual targeting and attention metrics are emerging as key tools for maintaining relevance and measurement as traditional identifiers lose importance. The challenge for advertisers is therefore familiar; reaching the right audience and proving that it worked, but the technology used to achieve it is being fundamentally redesigned.
Martech is becoming intelligent infrastructure
The same transformation is taking place within martech. CRM, CMS and marketing automation remain essential, but their real value increasingly depends on how well they connect. Generative AI can support content creation, personalisation and campaign planning, while customer data platforms are moving towards real time, AI supported segmentation. Data clean rooms are also opening up new possibilities for privacy compliant collaboration.
Another major development is generative engine optimisation (GEO). As consumers increasingly discover products, brands and information through AI systems, businesses need to consider how they appear in AI generated answers as well as traditional search results.
This makes the quality of the technology stack more important than its size. A company with fewer connected systems may have a stronger setup than one operating dozens of disconnected platforms.
AI search changing visibility and the technology behind it
One company illustrating this shift is Profound, a Platinum Sponsor of DMEXCO 2026. Its platform helps marketing teams analyse and optimise their visibility within AI search, while using AI agents to automate tasks across the marketing process. The development reflects a much broader change: as consumers increasingly ask AI systems what to buy, where to go or which brands to consider, businesses need to think about visibility beyond traditional search. AI is becoming both a tool marketers use and an environment in which brands increasingly compete for attention.
The Adtech Summit and Martech Summit will explore these developments in greater depth, with each content block expanded to four hours from two hours in the previous year. The focus is not simply on what new technology can do, but on what actually works in business: which solutions scale, where AI genuinely improves efficiency, which data strategies work under changing privacy requirements and how companies should structure their technology architecture.
Where marketing technology meets business strategy
The World of Tech will bring these questions to life through its exhibition area, live demonstrations and case studies on the Tech Stage, practical masterclasses, broader discussions on the Center Stage and strategic exchanges in the CMO Lounge. Major technology players including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, The Trade Desk and Adobe will be represented, while the Young Innovator Challenge 2026 will see 30 students from Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences develop solutions to real world challenges around AI, customer journeys, brand experience and commerce.
But the bigger story is the convergence taking place across the entire technology stack. Customer experience depends on data, data depends on architecture, automation depends on connected systems and AI increasingly depends on all of them. Marketing technology can therefore no longer be treated purely as a marketing issue.
The World of Tech gives businesses the opportunity to step back from individual products and consider the bigger picture: which technologies genuinely improve the way they operate, how those systems fit together and what measurable business problem they solve. The competitive advantage will not necessarily belong to the company with the biggest technology stack, but to the one that knows which technology matters, how it connects and what it delivers.
Comments