DMEXCO returned to Cologne this year with the tagline “Be bold, move forward”.
And with more than 1,000 speakers spread across 17 stages, alongside everything from bumper cars to booth parties keeping the energy high, it certainly delivered.
Beyond the spectacle, two themes stood out, particularly on the tech stage: how people search, and how we work with AI. Both are changing fast, and marketers need to keep pace. Before we dive into the highlights, watch our team at DMEXCO share their thoughts on the future of AI in marketing.
Not long ago, optimizing for search meant optimizing for keywords. Today, words are just one format in a range of cues that customers give search engines. On the DMEXCO main stage, Google’s Gaurav Bhaya summed it up in a single line: “The way people ask is changing forever.”
Search is no longer just about simple typed queries. It’s images, speech, and nuanced conversations with long tail phrases and complex specifications. People want richer answers with more context and nuance. That means marketers can’t just think in terms of keyword matches anymore. They need to decode intent across multiple dimensions and be ready to connect with customers in new, more fluid ways.
Bhaya highlighted how searches now come with “more context, more constraints, and clear intent,” often without the traditional keywords marketers have relied on for decades. Behind the scenes, AI is running multiple parallel searches and piecing together signals to serve better results. For businesses, the opportunity is clear: the brands that adapt to this new model of discovery will be the ones that show up when and where it matters.
Pinterest’s Cecile van Steenberge picked up the same theme of evolving search, but from a shopper’s perspective. She reminded the audience that research found people make around 35,000 decisions every day. For shoppers, that constant decision-making can feel overwhelming. It’s no surprise, then, that 70% of carts get abandoned.
Van Steenberge’s point was that the problem isn’t technical: “It’s not a checkout problem, it’s a confidence problem.” People fear there might be a better option, so they hesitate.
That’s where AI comes in again, as curator. AI-powered visual search can help decode what people want, narrowing choices down and building confidence in decisions. Pinterest is betting big on this kind of AI-driven curation to give shoppers the reassurance they need to commit.
Taken together, the message was clear: the future of search isn’t just about finding things, it’s about finding confidence. And where speed and convenience used to be king, it’s now a given. To gain the competitive edge, marketers need to design experiences around reassurance and context.
As Adverity’s Lee McCance put it, “AI was obviously a huge topic this year, but one thing that stood out was how the conversation about AI has dramatically shifted from what it can do, to how to actually get the most out of it."
If search is changing on the front end of the customer journey, AI is reshaping how marketers work behind the scenes. Across sessions, a common thread ran through: AI isn’t replacing people, but it is changing how we handle data, measure outcomes, and focus our creativity.
On the adtech stage, PubMatic’s Emma Newman cut right to the chase: “If you're waiting two or three weeks to get the data, you've blown the budget.” Campaigns move too fast for lagging numbers.
The panel emphasized that AI is being used for efficiency and effectiveness, not to eliminate roles. Newman put it plainly: the goal is to “do more with what we have, get rid of the busy work and focus on strategic thinking” — the kind of work AI can’t do.
Infosum’s Nick Henthorn echoed that reassurance: “People are not redundant.” Instead, he predicted a “shift away from lots of people pulling handles to automation through AI.” The upshot is that marketers’ roles may evolve, but they’re far from obsolete.
If data speed is one challenge, audience attention is another. The MMA session introduced their “First Second Strategy,” reframing how attention should be measured and earned.
Quantcast’s Sara Sihelnik put it bluntly: “We were trying to achieve true attention, not just a view, not just a click.” That means giving more credence to metrics like cost per attentive second and placing more emphasis on contextual relevance.
Indeed’s Oliver Oesterreicher drove the point home: “It’s not only about traffic, it’s about quality traffic.” In an era where impressions are cheap, what matters is whether they actually land.
GumGum’s Niklas Sonnenschein saw AI as the enabler: “AI will help us deliver those ads when it matters” and make creative production faster, with fewer resources. The implication is that marketers will need to rethink not just how they buy media, but how they design creative for micro-attention windows.
One of the more packed sessions of the week was our own masterclass with Barilla, From Data to Intelligence: Building Future-Ready Marketing Analytics. The turnout and energy showed just how much appetite there is for making AI and analytics practical.
Barilla’s Mariama Kamanda grounded the discussion in business priorities: “Why start with the tech when instead you can work backwards to see what you need?” Too often, companies chase tools first and strategy second.
On AI, she was clear: “It’s not a replacement, it should be a process enhancer or a catalyst.” A theme that echoed through the week. Kamanda also emphasized the importance of the nuts and bolts, such as standardizing campaign names to lay the foundation for more advanced techniques like Marketing Mix Modeling. And she reminded the room that data literacy isn’t just about skills, it’s about culture: “Do people feel safe enough to say that they don’t know?”
Her advice? Create an environment where experimentation feels safe. As she put it, she’s an advocate for “being playful with data.” That playfulness is what unlocks new ideas. The key takeaway from the session was simple: tech and data only deliver if people and partnerships are in place. That balance of foundations, culture, and innovation is essential.
From Google’s evolving search experience to Pinterest’s shopper curation, from adtech transparency to the science of attention, and from Adverity’s own masterclass with Barilla, the message was consistent: AI is changing everything about how we connect with customers and how we work behind the scenes.
But being bold at DMEXCO doesn't mean handing control to machines. It means leaning into AI as a partner to decode intent, boost confidence, streamline data, and free up humans to do what we do best: think creatively and strategically.