Marketing leaders are expected to deliver growth in environments that are becoming increasingly difficult to navigate and control. Media costs continue to rise, consumer behavior is shifting rapidly, and measurement is getting more complex -all while digital platforms become more automated. At the same time, many teams are under pressure to adopt AI without a clear view of how it delivers sustained business value.
Incubeta hosted its first global edition of Tomorrow’s World to address these challenges head-on. With Incubeta’s keynote speakers Michael Ossendrijver, Chief Growth Officer and Max Flajsner Director of Data & AI, the focus was not on chasing individual platform features, but on introducing new tools that work together – helping marketing teams build systems that deliver results today while compounding value over time.
“If the consumers you want to sell to are radically changing how they buy products online, you cannot be successful with the structure you’ve had for the last 20 years. Building systems for the future isn’t just about automation, it’s about turning marketing into a force for profitable growth.”
Michael Ossendrijver, Chief Growth Officer, Incubeta.
Explore five key takeaways that marketing leaders can apply to outperform in 2026 and beyond.
1. Quantify Which Creative Elements Drive Performance, and Prove the Value of Creative Investment
Creative is one of the biggest drivers of marketing outcomes, yet it has historically been difficult to measure beyond surface-level metrics. Advertisers need to move creative out of subjective debate and into a more measurable, performance-driven framework.
What this enables:
- Identify which creative components are correlated with stronger media outcomes.
- Understand not just what worked, but why it worked.
- Build a more structured and repeatable creative testing approach.
- Begin linking creative performance to broader business impact.
What makes it possible: Creative Performance Index (CPI)
CPI connects directly to ad platforms and combines creative assets with performance data. Using AI-driven tagging, it analyzes creative attributes across formats and channels. The platform supports pre-flight creative analysis, in-account creative performance visibility, and competitive creative monitoring – helping teams optimize creative based on evidence, not assumptions.
Watch the CPI Demo Below
“The goal isn’t just to ‘do something with AI’ for the sake of efficiency. The real excitement lies in bringing disparate data sources together to unlock insights that were humanly impossible to reach before. We want to turn marketing teams into ‘oracles’ who don’t just report on the past but accurately predict the drivers of future demand.”
Max Flajsner Director of Data & AI, Incubeta
2. Move From Reporting Performance to Understanding Why Performance Changed
As measurement signals fragment, reporting alone is no longer enough. Marketing leaders need clarity on the drivers behind performance shifts – particularly when platform-reported results don’t always align with business outcomes.
What this enables:
- Move beyond surface metrics to understand key performance drivers.
- Compare different data perspectives (such as platform and analytics data).
- Communicate performance changes more clearly to senior stakeholders.
What makes it possible: Outperform BI
Outperform BI is an agentic marketing insights platform designed to unify multiple data sources and focus analysis on what matters most. As demonstrated, it supports campaign-level analysis, time-based performance review, modeled driver breakdowns (including baseline and demand signals), and forward-looking planning insights – all aimed at reducing noise and improving decision-making.
“We want to turn marketing teams into ‘marketing oracles.’ By combining all the different drivers of demand – from seasonality and weather to price competition and stock – into a single agent, we move beyond just looking at the ‘what’ of performance and finally start explaining ‘why’ the performance actually changed.”
Max Flajsner Director of Data & AI, Incubeta
3. Plan and Activate YouTube with Greater Speed, Structure, and Consistency
YouTube remains a critical channel for reach and brand impact, but planning and activation can be complex and manual. There is an opportunity to apply AI-driven planning to improve efficiency without sacrificing rigor.
What this enables:
- Turn briefs into structured YouTube plans.
- Use historical performance and reach data to model different scenarios.
- Reduce manual effort and potential for human error during activation.
What makes it possible: YouTube Optimizer within Seamless Strategy
The workflow connects accounts, ingests and refines briefs, analyzes historical campaign performance, incorporates YouTube reach data, and generates structured scenarios that can be activated through platform integrations – supporting faster and more consistent execution.
4. Reduce Non-Incremental Search Spend by Managing Paid and Organic Together
Search continues to evolve rapidly, but one longstanding challenge remains: paid and organic search are often managed in isolation. This can lead to inefficiencies and missed opportunities to improve profitability.
What this enables:
- Identify where paid spend overlaps with organic performance.
- Reallocate investment toward areas that drive incremental impact.
- Improve overall search efficiency by focusing on profit, not just volume.
- Forecast how improvements in organic performance could affect paid investment.
What makes it possible: Seamless Search
Seamless Search combines paid and organic search signals using machine learning to guide decision-making. Now with the addition of self-serve A/B testing, Performance Max data integration, causal impact analysis, alerting, AI-generated reporting summaries, and SEO forecasting that links organic gains to paid efficiency, teams can move beyond managing volume to optimizing for profitability.
5. Regain Control in AI-Driven Shopping and Search by Improving the Inputs – and Connecting Everything
As AI becomes embedded across media and commerce platforms, automation alone is not enough. A recurring message was that better outcomes depend on feeding platforms better inputs and connecting data sources that typically sit apart.
What this enables:
- Improve how products appear against relevant search queries.
- Use additional signals, including unstructured data such as reviews and query insights.
- Apply business context that platforms don’t naturally account for, such as stock, margin, and seasonality.
- Create stronger alignment between data, activation, and outcomes.
What makes it possible: Incubeta’s Seamless Technology ecosystem
Seamless Technology is designed to connect disparate data sources – across search, feeds, creative intelligence, measurement, and activation – so marketing systems work together rather than in silos. This connected approach supports more informed decisions and more consistent performance over time.
Marketing teams don’t outperform by adopting tools in isolation. They outperform by building connected systems – systems grounded in measurement, informed by data, enabled by technology, and designed to adapt as consumers and platforms continue to change.
“The domains between brand and performance are collapsing. Marketing is becoming a quantified, integrated system. To win, leaders need to be curious, structured, and methodical – because right now, the rules of the entire ecosystem are being rewritten.”
Michael Ossendrijver, Chief Growth Officer, Incubeta.
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See How It Works: Watch the Full Tomorrow’s World Recording Here
See Incubeta demonstrate these tools using real-world data and live scenarios – from querying agentic BI platforms in plain language to seeing how AI-driven feed optimizations can capture hidden search demand. It is the quickest way to see how these theoretical systems function in a live, high-stakes environment.
Refine Your Strategy: Download Incubeta’s 2026 Marketing Outlook
Our playbook unpacks the essential shifts marketing leaders must navigate, providing a clear framework of practical actions you can take today to improve operational efficiency and drive the kind of sustainable, profitable growth that defines success. Download your copy of Incubeta’s 2026 Marketing Outlook.