Ad Spend Is Surging—But Google’s MMM AI Is Another Sleight of Hand

Let’s cut through the industry self-congratulation: ad spend is up, sure, but don’t pretend this is magic or some harbinger of creative renaissance. On Thursday, the IAB jacked up its 2026 projection to 12.3% growth—after lowballing it at 9.5% back in January. This is less a sign of market genius and more a reflection of brands being strong-armed into the same platforms and measurement grifts as last fall.

Enter Google, right on cue, trumpeting its new AI-driven MMM (Marketing Mix Modeling). If you think this is going to solve your attribution headaches, take a walk through any agency Slack channel this Friday afternoon. What you’ll actually hear is panic over opaque models and another black box that conveniently favors Google’s own inventory. Because MMM is just the latest flavor of ‘trust us, we’ll optimize’—only now, your CFO can’t even interrogate the algorithm.

Here’s the ugly truth: the AI MMM is a Trojan horse. It promises clarity but delivers control. Smaller brands will get steamrolled, and the same lazy agencies (yes, the ones that still bill by the hour for ‘strategy’) will eat up whatever Google spits out, slap a ‘data-driven’ sticker on it, and call it a day. Meanwhile, Google gets even stickier, burrowing its tentacles deeper into your forecasting and reporting stack.

If you’re running media spend this autumn, your job is not to get hypnotized by the AI hype. Demand raw data, force your vendors to show their work, and—most of all—stop letting your MMM be another self-licking ice cream cone. If your agency can’t interrogate your model, fire them. If your VP of Marketing wants to ‘test the new Google AI suite’, ask how it’s weighted toward YouTube versus, say, actual conversion lift. Make this season the one where you stop swallowing the black box and start demanding receipts.