The marketing industry faces a false choice between brand and performance. Rather than retiring the term "performance marketing" – as Meta's CMO recently proposed – we need to redefine it for an integrated future where all marketing is accountable, measurable, and drives sustainable growth across every timeframe.

This session challenges the artificial divisions that have constrained marketing effectiveness and presents a manifesto for performance marketing's next chapter: one that encompasses brand equity alongside conversion rates, customer lifetime value alongside cost per acquisition, and sustained market share gains alongside immediate response.

In this fireside chat, we’ll cut through the hyperbole surrounding AI and its impact on performance marketing to show why Search Engine Optimisation remains vital, human oversight is key, and your brand is more important than ever in 2026.

A candid conversation on resilience, reinvention and the performance marketing strategies that make true comeback possible.

AI and large language models are changing how consumers discover brands - and how performance marketers drive results. As discovery shifts beyond keywords to AI-driven recommendations across search and media, performance teams need a new playbook.

In this session, Croud will share new insights from the latest Croud Consumer Index, revealing how discovery is evolving across LLMs and platforms, informed by Black Friday and Christmas trading behaviour. Plus they’ll be joined on stage by Compare the Market’s Director of Performance Marketing Julia Klein to explore:

• How AI and LLMs are reshaping search, media performance and brand discovery
• The move from keyword intent to semantic understanding — and its impact on performance strategy
• What an AI-driven media mix could look like in 2026 and beyond
• How to measure performance when machine learning mediates discovery

Practical, performance-focused takeaways will help marketers drive a stronger return on intelligence in the next era of discovery.

This keynote will explore how traditional positioning - a concept that has remained static for over 40 years - can no longer keep pace with today’s fast-evolving market and technological landscape. It will advocate for a new definition of positioning, one that operates like software: structured, adaptable, and continuously iterating.

Drawing on the 5D Framework (Differentiated, Distinctive, Discoverable, Directional, Dynamic), the session will show how positioning must be engineered to evolve in real time, just like code. It will argue that in the intelligence era, positioning isn't just a static asset; it's the dynamic, living system that drives sustained competitive GTM and performance advantage, enabling businesses to stay ahead in a world increasingly shaped by both human and machine decision-makers.

As we move deeper into the AI search era, Google is sending less traffic to the open web than ever before. To remain profitable, SERPs have been diversified and monetised, transforming into "sticky" environments where AI Overviews represent the newest ad inventory. The customer hasn’t changed, it’s the gatekeepers that have. 

In this session, Vic Morton explores why brands must look beyond the traditional search box to capture consumer attention. With search accounting for only 3.5% of our time online, discovery now happens everywhere. This session explores the need for brands to be both findable by machines and compelling to humans.

Why internal team makeup is the foundation of authentic external engagement.

In an increasingly saturated digital landscape, traditional marketing channels are facing a crisis of engagement. With email open rates hovering around 10% and response times measured in days, businesses are seeking radical innovation rather than incremental improvements to boost their sales and marketing performance.

This session explores the transition from one-way, static communication to the Conversational Era powered by the WhatsApp API and Artificial Intelligence. Drawing on data from over 1,500 brands, we will demonstrate, with a real case study, how moving to a bidirectional communication model allows companies to listen to their customers in real-time, achieving open rates exceeding 90% and interaction rates 13 times higher than traditional methods.

You will learn how to integrate WhatsApp into your tech stack (connecting with over 4,000 tools like Shopify, Prestashop, and Klaviyo) to transform your marketing from a broadcast medium into a powerful revenue engine. Join us to discover how to position your brand among the Innovators in the new millennium of digital commerce.

Affiliate has outgrown its bargain-bin reputation. It’s no longer just about cashback and discount codes – it can be a serious acquisition weapon when used strategically. In this unfiltered fireside chat, a senior brand leader shares how they tore up the old affiliate playbook and rebuilt it around partnerships that drive incremental new customers, real LTV, and profitable growth.

Takeaway: A practical blueprint for elevating affiliate from a nice-to-have side line to a high performing growth channel.

The fight for audience attention has never been fiercer. In the entertainment and TV space, performance marketing is evolving fast, with CTV and BVOD giving brands measurable reach, fan engagement, and real conversion. This session explores how performance-first thinking is rewriting the playbook for entertainment marketers - and why winning the attention wars will decide who thrives in the streaming era.

Domestic channels are saturated, and CPA is rising. While your competitors fight over expensive local keywords, they are ignoring high-intent, low-cost traffic in global markets. This session isn’t about “going global” someday, it’s about unlocking immediate, scalable growth now without bloating your headcount.

This session is built on 5 in-depth conversations with leading global CMOs, combined with our own hands-on experience at Weglot of turning international markets into scalable growth channels.

Key takeaways:

• Scaling without chaos: How AI-driven tools and improved processes remove the traditional bottlenecks of international expansion.
• Conversion beyond language: Why translation alone isn’t enough and how true localization drives measurable ROI.
• Real tests that drive results: Practical international growth experiments you can apply immediately.

Can a meme move product? Can a joke really drive ROI? WaterWipes says yes — and they’re here to prove it. In this fast-paced, laugh-out-loud session, the team will revisit their funniest campaigns, share the missteps they’d rather forget, and unpack the moments when humour truly delivered commercial impact. Expect real examples, honest learnings, and a clear view of how WaterWipes has turned comedy into a high-performing growth lever.

As the creator economy matures, influence alone is no longer the end goal. Today’s creators are building businesses, products and platforms that extend far beyond social feeds.

This panel explores how creators reach that inflection point — what drives the move from content to ownership, the role of partners in that transition, and what it takes to build something that lasts beyond algorithms and audience reach.

In this fireside chat, HSBC’s Group Head of Marketing Effectiveness explores what truly drives long-term growth, how to make smarter decisions in an attention-fragmented world, and the role effectiveness plays in balancing performance, brand and commercial impact. 

Clicks don’t pay the bills. Too many brands still chase vanity metrics that look good on a slide but fail to prove real business impact. In this no-nonsense fireside chat, a senior marketer from a leading brand reveals how they cut the noise, redefined success and built a measurement culture that the c-suite actually cares about.

Details coming soon!

What happens when the future shows up faster than you’re ready for? Come play it out.

Format: Hands-on, small group “war-game”. Each table gets a 5–10-year future shock scenario, builds a survival/growth plan, then battle-tests it against the room’s challenges and counter-moves.

Scenarios:

• Search Blackout: AI assistants answer 70% of queries; paid search collapses.
• Retail Media Empire: 70% of digital ad spend flows into retail walled gardens.
• Carbon Clampdown: Law bans high-footprint programmatic; carbon audits on every impression.
• AI Challenger Flood: Thousands of AI-generated DTC brands launch with automated optimisation.
• Attention Crisis: Human ad attention drops below 2 seconds; formats/targeting implode.

A fast, focused look at how Tefal rebuilt its marketing organisation for D2C growth - uniting media, CRM and commercial teams, grounding decisions in real run-rate performance, and creating a performance engine built for scale. A sharp, practical blueprint for modern D2C success.

Proposition: Brands should own the strategy, data and experimentation, agencies provide surge capacity and niche skills

Two teams stress-test the motion using a real scenario, arguing cost, speed, risk, and talent trade-offs.

Each year, Performance Marketing World shines a spotlight on the industry’s brightest young talent with its 30under30 list. At Performance Marketing Unlocked, we bring that talent to the stage. This year’s 30under30 panel explores what it means to be an intrapreneur – driving innovation, fresh thinking and bold ideas from within established organisations. Expect candid stories, practical advice and inspiration from rising stars who are shaping the future of performance marketing from the inside out.

What the art world taught me about performance marketing

This keynote explores a counterintuitive idea: the most powerful lessons in performance marketing don’t come from dashboards, but from art.

After years working in performance and growth marketing for global brands, I became Head of Marketing at Colnaghi, the world’s oldest commercial art gallery. That shift revealed a simple truth: people don’t buy objects or ads - they buy stories.

In the art world, there are no funnels, CTAs, or retargeting. Yet artworks sustain value and command price premiums over decades or centuries because each one carries a narrative: provenance, context, symbolism, and human meaning.

The keynote reframes storytelling not as brand “fluff”, but as a core performance driver. Stories act as pre-conversion assets: they improve attention quality, increase creative effectiveness, reduce price sensitivity, and extend campaign lifespan.

The session is designed for marketers and growth leaders who want to move beyond short-term optimisation and build performance that compounds over time.

This panel dives into the evolving relationship between brand and performance, and why creative is the missing link. Hear from marketers who are breaking down silos, building brand-first strategies that deliver measurable impact, and producing performance-ready creative at scale. , We’ll unpack what it takes to humanise brands, drive real results, and make creativity a true growth engine.

Is paid social still a performance engine, or has it hit a ceiling? Two marketing leaders battle it out: one who believes the golden age is over, another who shows how smart creative, diversified formats and data innovation are still delivering growth.

CMOs are under constant pressure to deliver immediate performance while building sustainable brand growth. This fireside chat explores how to balance short-term performance metrics with mid- and upper-funnel investment, how awareness and consideration activity links to measurable business outcomes, and what this means for the evolving role of the CMO.