AI and Data-Driven Advertising Strategies

The playbook for performance marketing is being rewritten, as AI is changing where discovery happens. Paid channels are evolving beyond Google and Meta, and platforms are asking you to trust their automation more than ever.

Now, ICP is your edge, and vague targeting can result in wasted spend. Generative platforms like ChatGPT are changing how brands get discovered, meaning SEO is no longer optional; it’s foundational to AI-driven visibility.

What used to work in performance marketing still matters, but it just isn’t enough anymore. As AI reshapes discovery and paid media becomes broader and more automated, the gap between strategy and execution is where performance either dies or scales.

In this piece, I’m sharing what we’re seeing at Common Ground: how data, content, and platform behaviour are colliding and how marketers can adjust their strategies before the ground shifts completely.

Your Performance Is Only As Strong As Your Targeting

For all the talk about AI, automation, and platform power, one truth still holds: if your audience definition is weak, your results will be too. During our 2026 Digital Marketing Landscape discussion, I touched on how honing in on the ICP is important:

“There’s a lot of talk there about who the person is that we’re targeting, that ICP being really specific around who are they, what do they do, what are their interests demographically… all of those type of things to really enhance the performance of not just paid activity but any other activity as well.”

Understanding your ICP isn’t just a media strategy question; it’s the foundation of creative, channel choice, and conversion. Today’s platforms are built to reward relevance, but they can’t optimise what they don’t understand. If you’re feeding Meta or Google a vague persona, don’t expect tight performance.

The best-paid campaigns, the ones that actually scale the pipeline, start with clarity on who you’re speaking to, what stage they’re in, and what matters to them. Because no matter how smart the algorithm is, if your message doesn’t match the moment, your ad won’t land.

Trusting Platforms Without Losing Control

Platform automation is accelerating in almost every sector, and for many marketers, 2026 will be the year of reckoning. Google’s Performance Max, Meta Advantage+, and LinkedIn AI targeting: they’re all designed to take decisions off your hands. But that convenience comes with risk.

As Sam Searle highlighted during our recent digital marketing discussion,

“You’ve got to trust them to be able to get the most out of it, but you don’t want to trust them too much because at the end of the day, they want to spend as much ad spend as possible.”

AI-led optimisation is valuable, but it isn’t neutral. Marketers who lean too far into automation without oversight will find themselves watching performance slide while costs climb. Sam continued to explain why this greater visibility is important:

“You can’t just sort of set and forget and hope that a campaign will work well. You need to test… how you set up something now isn’t necessarily going to be the best in even three months’ time because things are changing so quickly.”

In 2026, that cycle will move even faster. The platforms will keep changing, and the only constant you can control is your own feedback loop.

Here’s what smart teams are doing now: building structured testing into every campaign. Reviewing audience signals monthly and revisiting creative every quarter. Mapping platform recommendations against actual business outcomes, not just ROAS.

Paid Strategy Is Bigger Than Google and Meta Now

For years, performance marketing meant one thing: Google Ads. Maybe Meta, if you had the right product. But in 2026, that mindset is not just outdated; it can be limiting your reach.

As Matthew Taylor pointed out, the platforms to focus on have expanded:

“What people include under paid advertising is going to become broader… there’s also things like advertising on websites like Capterra… it is where your audience are going to come.”

B2B buyers don’t follow clean funnels anymore. Instead, they browse review platforms, join niche Slack groups, listen to podcasts, and yes, still Google things. But relying solely on traditional PPC channels ignores where actual evaluation is happening

In 2026, the smartest paid strategies won’t obsess over CPC or CTR. They’ll focus on where buying decisions happen and make sure the brand shows up there first.

Discovery Is Moving to AI (and Taking Search With It)

ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews aren’t fringe tools anymore. They’re how more buyers are starting their research, which changes everything about how brands get found.

To start moving in the new direction that AI has brought in, Shane O’Hare has explained the aspect you should focus on first:

“Step one: understand how your audience is using tools like ChatGPT… who’s winning that at the moment? Which of your competitors are showing up, and why, and then what do you need to do to get there yourself.”

AI doesn’t just replace search engines; it rewrites the discovery experience. Instead of ten blue links, buyers now get summarised insights. Your brand either makes that shortlist or doesn’t show up at all. And the algorithm behind those recommendations? It still starts with SEO. Shane continued:

“Optimising for tools like ChatGPT actually leans on SEO quite heavily… there’s quite a correlation between how well you perform on SEO and how well you perform on GEO.”

Generative platforms need structured, trusted, and frequently updated content to reference. If you’re not producing that, if your SEO strategy paused when traffic dipped, you’re potentially handing your visibility to someone else. People are still there and still searching; they’re just using different tools in addition to what has previously been the norm.

In 2026, marketers need to stop asking “how do we rank?” and start asking “where does our content get pulled from?”

What 2026-Ready Performance Marketing Actually Looks Like

By now, one thing’s clear: success in 2026 won’t come from bigger budgets or chasing new platforms. It’ll come from marketers who build flexible, insight-led systems and act faster than their competitors.

That starts with clarity about who you’re targeting, which channels matter, and what “performance” really means.

It means moving from channel-first to content-first, not content for SEO, or for ads, but content that earns attention and drives action across every surface.

It means rethinking campaign cycles. Not quarterly reworks, but monthly experiments. Not set-and-forget, but always-on refinement, and it means understanding that AI isn’t replacing strategy, its amplifying the gaps in it.

The brands that win next year will be the ones who stop separating SEO, paid, and content and start connecting them through data, testing, and creative clarity.