If you oversee paid search, paid social, or programmatic budgets, the archetypal Jupiter Festival Miami fair handed you a 2027 preparedness problem. The executives who buy and market premium video spent three days saying that attain is no longer the figure that matters. And the prosperity is already moving toward creators, attention-weighted media, and new streaming inventory to rear that up.
That matters to PPC group additional than it power seem. When the group environment brand budgets alter the KPI, the achievement squad eventually inherits the new scorecard.
I’ve been looking for signals akin this at industry conferences since I entered the site in 2002. The speakers at the fine ones portion strategic insights, crucial data, and tactical direction that fly under the radar, since organizers cognize accepted knowledge won’t inhabit seats or bring attendees rear next year. So, they publish group who activity at the foremost border of the foremost edge.
Jupiter Festival ran from Oct. 6 to 9, 2026, at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Its organizers say more than 2,300 media, entertainment, and sports leaders attended. Art Basel’s parent, MCH Group, took a 20% stake in June. The IAB signed up as a founding partner, and YouTube was the founding sponsor.
I didn’t attend. But I reviewed the regular recaps the festival’s publicists sent me, afterward checked what the speakers stated against published data. Four signals held up.
Signal 1: Reach Is Losing Its Grip As The KPI
Jasmine Dawson, elder VP of digital at BBC Studios, on a Day 1 panel concerning construction fandoms that brands can activate said, “Reach should not be the primary KPI.” A big attain figure is awesome for the media owner, she added, but it says nothing concerning whether the spectators volition do item next.
Her difference was that “building an spectators is not fandom and fandom is not audience.”
On Day 2, Marc Guldimann, CEO and co-founder of Adelaide, put a measure example about the identical idea. “If you desire to charge the norm of an opportunity, appearance at the probability of attention,” he stated during a panel alongside YouTube’s U.S. managing director Brian Albert and Evan Shapiro of ESHAP. Brands, he added, are now telling the entire ecosystem that they attention additional concerning quality.
That isn’t a throwaway row from Guldimann. Adelaide’s AU metric scores media placements from 0 to 100 on their likelihood of capturing notice and driving outcomes. Its 2026 Outcomes Guide covers 60 campaigns. And on Oct. 14, a week following Miami, the business launched a partner heading program for study and outcome partners whose data can be matched immediately to AU.
Shapiro pushed the disagreement furthest. Three days before he unveiled the 2026 Creator Ecosphere Map on phase on Oct. 8, he previewed it in a Substack article headlined “The Era of Reach is Over. Welcome to The Affinity Era.” The map ranks creators by follower figure and, alongside that, grades all one on an affinity score.
Three speakers from three corners of the business, the seller, the measure vendor, and the analyst, landed in the identical place. That’s what an emerging trend looks akin before it shows up in a platform’s reporting interface.
Here’s my take. Paid hunt group volition be tempted to shrug, since hunt has never been a attain business. But your YouTube, CTV, and Demand Gen row items likely motionless study on impressions, CPM, and perspective rate. Those are attain metrics. If the brand flank starts asking for quality-weighted numbers in 2027, the achievement squad that already has them volition own that conversation.
See also: How Do I Measure And Attribute When Clicks Only Tell Part Of The Story? – Ask A PPC
Signal 2: Creator Content Is Turning Into Paid Media Inventory
The Day 3 panel “Direct to Fan: How Creators Are Building the New Media Stack” included Amanda Tarpey, caput of creator and imaginative at YouTube Ads. Her peruse on advertisers was that marketers are “waking up” to the trust, influence, and authenticity creators have. “They’re saying: I can’t oversee to young female that,” she said. “There’s a lot of experimentation, but the infrastructure is not standardized.”
That second declaration is the one PPC teams should underline.
The IAB’s own numbers display why. Its 2025 Creator Economy Ad Spend & Strategy Report established that 48% of creator ad buyers now regard creators a “must buy,” ranking them fair rearward paid hunt and social media. The study put U.S. creator ad expend at $37.1 milliard in 2025 and projected $43.9 milliard for 2026, according to Digiday’s breakdown of the report.
The divided is anywhere paid media comes in. Digiday reports that $13.2 milliard of the 2026 total is expected to go to paid amplification of creator satisfied on social media, up 48% from $8.9 billion. Another $11.1 milliard goes to amplifying that satisfied beyond social, up 56% from $7.1 billion. In another words, a expanding portion of “creator marketing” is really ad purchasing alongside creator-made creative.
The creators on phase explained the pull. Joakim Noah, the erstwhile NBA participant who hosts the YouTube sequence NOMAD, stated what he loves concerning YouTube is controlling his satisfied and “connecting alongside an spectators that is entirely distinct from what you’re used to.” Hudson Matter, a YouTuber and CEO of NextWave Media, called YouTube “one of the most mighty platforms in the world.”
One correction is needed, though. Matter additionally said, “almost fractional of the earth is on YouTube.” Alphabet doesn’t publish a monthly person count, but DataReportal puts YouTube’s ad attain at concerning 2.77 milliard group a month, approximately a third of the world’s population. That’s nearer to fractional of net users than fractional of the world. Use the smaller figure in your deck.
My perspective is that Tarpey’s “not standardized” alert is the genuine chance here. When the infrastructure is messy, the squad that can run creator satisfied through the identical testing, bidding, and conversion tracking site it applies to hunt ads becomes the squad that gets the budget.
See also: Why Running YouTube Ads Like Search Will Burn Your Budget
Signal 3: Streaming And Live Sports Are Manufacturing New Ad Supply
Scott Young, co-founder and chief merchandise authoritative of Transmit, made the most applicable item of Day 1. “With streaming, you have the chance to total precious ad provision that would have alternatively gotten lost,” he said. He singled out women’s sports, which he stated are expanding on liberated ad-supported streaming.
Transmit is the plumbing rearward that claim. Its application creates in-stream ad units, specified as picture-in-picture placements during live games, without adding additional traditional ad breaks. The business was selected for the Google Ad Manager Technology Partner Program, which connects that “in-moment” inventory to Google Ad Manager’s programmatic pipes for live and on-demand video.
For anyone purchasing through Google’s stack or a DSP, that’s the part to watch. New premium sports inventory that used to be sold lone through straightforward deals is starting to display up as programmatic supply.
The women’s sports thread ran through all three days. On Day 2, WNBA fable Lisa Leslie talked concerning welcoming new fans during staying true to loyal ones. Colie Edison, the WNBA’s chief growth officer, stated customers are “three times additional apt to acquisition from a brand that they support.” I couldn’t discover the study rearward that number, so treat it as a claim, not a benchmark. On Day 3, LA Sparks chairman Stacy Johns stated it’s on the teams “to create the satisfied and engaging moments for brands to display up authentically.”
There’s a budgeting capture for 2027, too. NBCUniversal Telemundo’s Claudia Chagui described turning Rockefeller Center into a FIFA World Cup fan settlement this summer. Big live events akin that, affirmative a costly U.S. midterm cycle, inflated 2026. EMARKETER projects total U.S. media ad spending growth volition dilatory from 15.6% in 2026 to 9.4% in 2027, and it warns that CTV budgets built about tournament and ballot inventory should anticipate to normalize.
Signal 4: Brands Are Paying For The Top Of The Funnel Again
Anish Melwani, erstwhile chairman and CEO of LVMH North America and co-founder of 22 Montaigne Entertainment, described a decade-long tug of war that all achievement marketer volition recognize. Luxury promotion evolved toward “more lesser chimney performance,” he said, “but awesome luxury brands comprehend how much you have to keep doing at the top in command for that to create a difference.”
He additionally drew a row between formats. Luxury volition keep looking for “pockets of premium,” he said, during another brands appearance at two-minute microdramas, and the two inhabit distinct places in consumers’ minds.
Shapiro predicted the identical format change from the another direction. “Like cable in the ’80s, you volition see an detonation of premium vertical satisfied in the next 18 months,” he said, adding that brands not engaging “will get remaining behind.”
Others asserted that the brand itself should rotate into the content. McDonald’s VP of promotion Elizabeth Campbell and Known chairman Ross Martin discussed Meal Ticket, the Prime Video documentary tied to the 50th McDonald’s All American Games. Chris Long, CEO of Longshot Productions, the business rearward The Beekeeper franchise, said. “If you have the prosperity and means, alternatively of spending it on a promotion campaign, why not put it in a movie anywhere it volition live forever?”
Andrew Gottlieb of NBCUniversal’s Rock Studios, the tagged satisfied component NBCU launched at Cannes in June, added the row I’d strip to the detect of anyone operating AI-generated ad variations at scale. “AI can do a lot, and it can create a lot of content, but it can’t create group attention concerning that content.”
Put those together, and the takeaway for PPC teams is uncomfortable. Search and buying campaigns crop demand. When brands change prosperity rear to the top of the funnel, the inquiry your CMO volition ask is how much of your conversion quantity that upper-funnel expend created. If you can’t answer it, person alternatively will.
See also: How To Measure PPC Performance When AI Controls The Auction
A Clean Sheet Of Paper, Not A Blank Check
IAB CEO David Cohen gave the row that ties the four signals together. Sitting downward on Day 3 alongside Forbes contributor Howard Homonoff, he said, “The one item that we merely cannot do is the identical item that we’ve done year-over-year.” Marketers affection year-over-year comparisons, he acknowledged, “but if there was a period for a spotless panel of document and taking advantage of the innovation in the market, it’s now.”
According to celebration co-founder William Mellis, as recounted to Net Influencer, Cohen additionally raised the need for a average prosperity to measure promotion throughout fragmented distribution.
I concur alongside Cohen on the spotless sheet. I’d add one circumstance he didn’t province on stage.
Notice who was making the case against attain in Miami. BBC Studios, YouTube, and Transmit were sponsors, and NBCUniversal and Adelaide market the alternatives. That doesn’t create them wrong. Sellers frequently see the change archetypal since they’re the ones being asked to demonstrate value. But it does average paid media teams should treat “reach is over” as a assumption to test before they prosperity against it.
Attention scores, affinity grades, and fandom indexes are all improved questions than “how many group saw it.” None of them is an answer until you’ve tied it to incremental sales in your own accounts. Ground-truth the new metrics the identical way we should have ground-truthed CPM a decade ago.
How To Use This In Your 2027 Plan
Here’s how I’d rotate the Miami signals into preparedness moves for a paid media or PPC squad this quarter.
1. Add a norm pillar to all upper-funnel row item. For YouTube, CTV, and programmatic video, study an notice or media norm mark next to CPM and perspective rate. Then run at smallest one test that compares high-scoring and low-scoring placements on conversion lift, so you cognize whether the mark predicts results in your accounts.
2. Budget for creator satisfied as ad creative. Set apart test prosperity to run creator-made resources through paid formats specified as Meta alliance ads, TikTok Spark Ads, or YouTube creator partnerships. Judge them alongside the identical holdouts, bidding strategies, and conversion tracking you use for search, since that site is exactly what Tarpey stated the market lacks.
3. Reset your year-over-year baseline. If your 2026 numbers contain World Cup or midterm-season inventory, emblem it before backing compares 2027 against it. Cohen’s direction to halt operating the identical scheme twelvemonth following twelvemonth applies to the difference too.
4. Write the measure memo before your CMO asks for it. One leaf that explains how upper-funnel expend feeds your hunt and buying conversions, and which test volition demonstrate it, is how a PPC director starts sounding akin a director.
Jupiter Festival’s organizers have already put Miami 2027 on the calendar. My bet is that by then, the speakers volition have stopped arguing concerning whether attain is the incorrect KPI and started arguing concerning which replacement is right.
PPC teams that have run their own tests by afterward volition have item value saying. The remainder volition be taking notes.
More Resources:
- Paid Media Marketing: 8 Changes Marketers Should Make In 2026
- 10 Hard Truths About PPC: Insights From Last Year’s Best Debates For 2026
- The Halo Effect: Your Paid Media Went Offline, Can You Survive Without It?
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