World Media Group members on how AI will reshape the media industry in 2026
Opinion
World Media Group members from The Wall Street Journal, CNN, New York Times and Havas Media Group reflect on how AI is transforming the business of journalism, and why AI must be adopted without sacrificing the importance of trust.
When I chat to our members and partners each year about what’s ahead, certain themes inevitably dominate. For the past couple of years, AI has featured prominently, but always with a speculative quality, a sense of experimentation and possibility.
This year feels different.
2025 marked AI’s transition from conversation topic to operational backbone. The question is no longer whether AI will transform media and advertising, but how. My conversations with publishers, agencies, tech partners and creative studios reveal four distinct pressure points now that AI is becoming embedded: trust, automation, monetisation and creativity.
Trust: verification as the new premium
For Chris Woodall, head of European advertising at The Wall Street Journal and co-president of the World Media Group, the AI revolution crystallises rather than diminishes the value proposition of quality journalism. “People don’t know if they can trust AI, but they can trust The Wall Street Journal and other premium publishers,” he argues. This positioning, built on brand heritage, is also backed by performance data.
“In 2025, the Journal published more than 1,300 exclusive stories, which not only provide agenda-setting news but that capture our audiences’ attention and truly engage them,” he said. This represents something AI cannot replicate: original reporting that advances the storylines on policy shifts, Mergers & Acquisitions and geopolitical strategies. “They are essential pieces of information audiences can’t get elsewhere,” Woodall notes. “They add value in ways LLMs and other publishers can’t, making leaders sharper and helping them be more decisive.”
Antonia John, global advertising account director at CNN International Commercial, and also co-president of the World Media Group, echoes this focus on verification but with an operational urgency shaped by the news cycle.
“As AI becomes more embedded in the media landscape, CNN’s approach is rooted in responsibility and transparency,” she explains.
With major global moments ahead, including the 2026 US midterms and multiple international elections, the network is investing heavily in AI-driven fact-checking and misinformation detection tools that identify manipulated images, deepfakes, and misleading content before it reaches audiences.
AI-slop reinforces the value of journalism
The surge in “AI-slop” is reinforcing the value of premium journalism. “CNN’s editorial integrity and global standards position us as a brand-safe, premium environment at a time when advertisers are seeking reliability above all else,” John notes.
Over the past five years, CNN has built proprietary machine-learning and natural-language-processing technology that analyses sentiment and context across text, video, audio and images, ensuring brand suitability at scale.
Both publishers emphasise that AI supports rather than replaces editorial judgement. The Journal uses AI for story summaries and internal productivity tools but maintains strict human oversight. CNN’s priority is “ensuring that AI supports our journalists – helping them analyse large datasets, monitor global developments in real time, and surface insights faster – while our editorial teams remain firmly in control of verification, judgement and storytelling,” John says.
She predicts that transparent AI workflows will become a trust differentiator: “Clearly labelling where AI has been used – or where it hasn’t – will be essential in maintaining and strengthening the trust CNN has built with audiences worldwide.” The network has appointed a dedicated director of AI innovation to ensure effective and responsible integration across the newsroom.
Automation: AI as strategic backbone to agency operations
Whilst publishers grapple with protecting their editorial credibility, agencies are reimagining their entire operational model around AI. For Jasmin Kaur, global partner at Havas Media Group and chair of the World Media Group’s Agency Advisory Board, this isn’t simply about adopting new tools – it’s about fundamentally redesigning how agencies work.
“AI is revolutionising the agency landscape by automating repetitive tasks, enabling hyper-personalised campaigns, and accelerating content creation at scale,” Kaur explains.
Agencies are leveraging machine learning and generative AI to analyse vast datasets, predict consumer behaviour, and optimise media strategies in real time. “This transformation is not just about speed – it’s about precision and insight, as AI-powered analytics deliver deeper audience understanding and predictive modelling for smarter decision-making,” she says.
At Havas, the Converged.AI initiative represents this shift: a core operating system rather than a peripheral tool. The network is deploying sentiment analysis and predictive tools to improve engagement and compliance, whilst offering tailored AI strategies and training to future-proof operations.
The financial impact is already evident – in early 2025, Havas reported a 50-basis-point improvement in EBIT margins and 2.3% organic revenue growth driven by these efficiency gains.
Ethical considerations remain critical
Yet Kaur emphasises that ethical considerations remain critical as agencies integrate AI into workflows. Bias mitigation and transparency aren’t afterthoughts; they’re fundamental to responsible deployment.
And crucially, the focus remains human-centric. “At Havas, we emphasise a human-centric approach with a strategy that focuses on building a ‘human-led agentic ecosystem,’ ensuring AI empowers creativity rather than replaces it. Employee upskilling and collaborative tool development remain central to this vision.”
Kaur points to what thought leaders at Harvard and McKinsey stress: AI augments rather than replaces human roles, freeing talent for strategic work and creative innovation. The most advanced adopters are embedding autonomous AI agents into end-to-end processes, redesigning workflows for agility and scalability.
She concludes, “AI is not a trend but a structural shift, redefining how agencies ideate, execute, and measure success. Those who embrace AI as a strategic backbone, rather than a tactical add-on, will lead the next era of marketing, where human insight and AI intelligence converge to create more personalised, impactful and scalable brand experiences.”
This transformation sets a new benchmark for the agency model, but it also raises questions about competitive dynamics. As AI capabilities become standardised across agencies, differentiation is likely to come not from technology itself, but in the strategic judgement, creative talent and ethical frameworks that direct it.
Monetisation: first-party data and AI-enhanced targeting
With third-party data disappearing and “AI-slop” flooding the ecosystem, first-party data has become even more critical.
CNN’s John describes how the network’s first-party data ecosystem has strengthened through its growing digital subscription model and streaming platforms. “AI-enhanced segmentation will help us better understand what people want and when they want it, informing everything from content recommendations to ad personalisation and product innovation,” she explains.
The Journal takes a similar approach with proprietary tools like SafeSuite for brand safety and ThematicAI for content-campaign matching. These use AI to improve outcomes whilst keeping trusted information at the core. For advertisers, the value proposition is clear: reach engaged, verified audiences in premium environments where brand safety is guaranteed.
John anticipates that “context-aware, AI-adjusted advertising will become standard, allowing brands to align with sentiment, mood and audience behaviour in real time.” This moves beyond basic targeting to dynamic campaign optimisation based on the news environment, audience engagement patterns and real-time context.
AI driving more impactful results.
At the New York Times, Raquel Bubar, managing director of T Brand Studio International, explains, “New GenAI targeting tools, like the one we’ve built called ‘BrandMatch’, will drive more impactful results of branded content campaigns, reaching audiences we wouldn’t have otherwise identified using more manual tools”.
The monetisation shift also affects the sell side. Tom Gunter, co-founder and director of new markets at Avid Collective, identifies this as perhaps the most immediate challenge for media vendors in 2026.
“More and more media buyers and agencies will lean on AI workflows to plan and assess media,” he explains. “Thus, audience data and effectiveness of media channels will be hyper-important for vendors. Your data will have to be searchable by those AI planners to ensure you’re considered and recommended on briefs.”
This isn’t theoretical; it’s already reshaping sales strategies. If an AI agent can’t easily parse a publisher’s audience data or performance metrics, that publisher simply won’t appear in the consideration set.
However, Gunter sees opportunities alongside threats. “AI has an opportunity to significantly improve many of our interactions between buyer and seller. We should be leaning in to leverage AI to improve our briefs, generate visual mock-ups and examples, all enhancing our creative output.”
But there’s a downside: “AI has already made it harder to connect with relevant buyers. AI cold-outreach email-slop will be the bugbear of every person in media.”
Creativity: the human lens is paramount
The strongest pushback against AI comes from the creative side. Bubar is emphatic that the human lens remains paramount in T Brand Studio’s creative work.
“We mirror the integrity and processes of The New York Times newsroom, where journalism will always be a human endeavour,” she says. “Our audiences demand that same journalistic quality and integrity from our branded content, so our storytelling for advertisers will never be solely created using GenAI.”
She predicts that 2026 will see radical experimentation with GenAI in content creation but believes it won’t last.
“I don’t see that as being particularly persuasive or deeply meaningful. The heroes will be creatives who use GenAI not to replace human ideas, but rather for better amplification and targeting of their work for more effective and impactful storytelling campaigns.”
She believes the sweet spot will be “creatives doubling down on the human lens, while leaning into smarter targeting tools that make their work more visible, accessible and persuasive to audiences than ever before”.
AI as tool or master?
Woodall at the Journal reflects on the existential dimension. “AI is the first piece of technology which will be able to think for itself,” he observes. “The printing press didn’t decide which books to print. AI is currently a tool making our lives more efficient, but it could become our master.”
Yet he takes comfort from history: when programmatic advertising arrived, many predicted the end of human-led ad sales. “I’m still here and we have a thriving programmatic business, so we can co-exist.”
As 2026 unfolds, we’ll discover whether the industry’s current consensus – AI as augmentation, not replacement – holds true as the technology evolves and competitive pressures increase.
Trust will remain the most valuable currency, and those who deploy AI ethically, transparently and with human oversight will have a clear advantage. The question isn’t whether to adopt AI, but how to do so without losing what makes trusted media valuable in the first place.
Jamie Credland is CEO of World Media Group, a strategic alliance of international media organisations.
Its members include BBC News, Business Insider, CNN International, The Economist, Forbes, Fortune, National Geographic, The New York Times Company, Reuters, TIME, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, associate member The Atlantic, and partners Avid Collective, Brand Metrics and Dianomi.