Agenda 2026 - Day One - Performance Marketing Unlocked

09:20 - 09:25

PMW editorial team opening remarks

The Arena

09:25 - 10:05

Keynote Presentation: Marketing Unlocked – The future is faster than you think

The Arena

Marketing is being rewritten in real time. Search is shifting towards AI assistants and social discovery. Retail media is exploding, putting power in the hands of those who own the data. The click is disappearing, replaced by signals like attention, watch-time, and sales lift. Algorithms are optimising spend inside black boxes, while brand, ecommerce and performance teams are converging into new structures.

This keynote rips open the future of marketing: the forces that are reshaping everything, the uncomfortable truths leaders must face, and the bold moves already being made to stay ahead.

10:05 - 10:35

Fireside Chat: Why the best CEOs think like marketers

The Arena

What changes when a company is led by someone who has lived and breathed marketing? Hear a CEO who rose from CMO share why customer obsession, creativity and performance thinking are the ultimate leadership edge.

10:35 - 11:00

Keynote Presentation: Why we get consumers wrong

The Arena

Performance marketing claims to know the consumer better than anyone – but what if everything we measure blinds us to what really drives behaviour? This provocative keynote exposes the messy, irrational, and often invisible forces behind how people shop, search, and decide.

11:30 - 11:50

Sponsor Presentation: DAC

The Arena

Session info coming soon.

11:50 - 12:25

Keynote Debate – Can performance marketing run the company?

The Arena

Motion: Performance marketing should lead enterprise strategy – owning the growth P&L, budget allocation, on both short – and long-term value creation.

Performance marketing has claimed the lion’s share of budgets, the spotlight in the boardroom, and the driver’s seat in growth strategy. But can it really run the company? Or does an obsession with clicks, conversions, and short-term ROI put long-term brand, profit and customer trust at risk?

In this fiery keynote debate, CMOs, CFOs, brand leaders and performance chiefs go head-to-head on the future balance of power. Is performance marketing ready to lead the enterprise – or is it destined to stay in its lane?

12:25 - 13:00

Upp.AI Panel

The Arena

Session info coming soon.

13:55 - 14:00

Opening remarks and announcements

The Pulse

Session info coming soon.

13:55 - 14:00

Opening remarks and announcements

The Exchange

Session info coming soon.

14:00 - 14:20

Sponsor slot

The Pulse

Session info coming soon.

14:00 - 14:20

Panel Discussion – Data is rewriting creative - and scale is the new battlefield

The Exchange

In today’s performance-driven landscape, creative is the single biggest lever for advertising success. But winning requires more than one great idea. Brands need to launch large volumes of high-quality creatives, test and identify the top performers, and optimise quickly - all within weeks, not months. Traditional creative intuition alone can’t keep pace. The answer lies in applying data at every stage of creative production and using automation to generate insights fast.

This panel brings together leading voices from brand, performance, and technology teams to unpack how data and creativity can work together to deliver results at scale. We’ll share real campaign examples to illustrate the volume of creative needed and the performance uplift achieved. Using live audience polling, we’ll invite attendees to choose which creatives they think would have performed best - then reveal the actual winners, showing how data often challenges intuition.

We’ll also explore the tensions between brand and performance teams - from creative consistency to speed of execution - and hear how leading brands are bridging that gap to drive growth.

Key takeaways for the audience

Why creative is now the primary driver of campaign performance.
How to use data and automation to scale creative production effectively.
Real examples of creative testing at volume and what “winning” creatives look like.
Practical lessons on aligning brand and performance teams for better outcomes.

14:20 - 14:50

Panel Discussion: Agentic AI: How will it change marketing?

The Pulse

From helpful co-pilots to autonomous agents that brief, build, buy, test and optimise – marketing is about to run at machine speed. This panel cuts through the hype to show where agentic AI is already moving the needle.

Where will agents add real value first?
How should we prove agent impact?
What guardrails keep pace without killing speed?
What team model do we need?

Session info coming soon.

14:50 - 15:10

Sponsor slot

The Pulse

Session info coming soon.

14:50 - 15:10

Sponsor slot

The Exchange

Session info coming soon.

15:10 - 15:30

Presentation – Clicks are overrated: designing a mix for zero-click growth

AI, retail search and social discovery are changing the rules: This session shows how to design a channel mix that thrives when search queries vanish and clicks become scarce.

Takeaway: A signal-to-revenue framework to help you connect new signals to growth

15:10 - 15:30

Debate - Can retail media outshine TV as the ultimate brand builder?

Motion: Retail media should be treated as a primary brand-building channel – earning a meaningful share of upper-funnel budgets alongside TV and online video.

Advocates of retail media argue that by the end of 2025, it will surpass TV in ad spend. But should it?

Proponents argue retail media promises the “triple-win”: brand lift, closed-loop proof, and proximity to purchase - making it worthy of upper-funnel budgets alongside TV and online video. Detractors counter that it lacks unduplicated reach, throttles storytelling, locks budgets into walled gardens and risks being more of a profit illusion than a profit engine.

In this fast-paced debate, two sides go head-to-head. Presenting hard evidence on whether retail media deserves its meteoric rise. Expect sharp cross-examination, live audience polling and a CFO-ready checklist for validating ROI before you sign off spend..

What happens when innovation moves from buzzword to business impact? In this case study, discover how one brand harnessed emerging technology to reimagine the way campaigns are built, delivered and measured.

Join us to find out what happens when marketing gets smarter through innovation: the breakthroughs, the surprises and the practical lessons you can take back to transform your next campaign.

Session info coming soon.