Google NewFront 2026
Google kicked off IAB NewFronts week on March 23, with the focus explicitly on artificial intelligence and what it can do for marketers.
The top-line theme of the session was “The Gemini advantage in Google Marketing Platform: Our best AI for your best ROI.” Presenters promised marketers unified inventory, accelerated performance, and ease of use — all in one place.
As Google VP of Agency Platforms & Client Solutions Kristen O’Hara put it, we’re living in interesting times. “As consumers, we’ve never had this much content, but as marketers we’ve never had this much complexity.” That complexity, she said, presents opportunity. “We’ve never had this many opportunities to meet the consumer where they’re ready to buy.”
But in order to navigate the complexity and fully take advantage of the opportunities, marketers will have to turn to AI.
And what better partner than Google, which she described as “the full-stack AI company, from the silicon to the search bar.” She also name-dropped a few Alphabet siblings like Isomorphic Labs, local delivery service Wing, Waymo, and Google Quantum AI.
In fact, one of the special guests who joined GMP Managing Partner Marta Martinez on stage was Zach Gleicher, Group Product Manager for Google DeepMind. Gleicher pointed out that the AI tech making self-driving Waymo cars possible is powering biddable ads in live sports. Other guests featured during the presentation were Amanda Cheung, Lead Media Strategy, Planning & Investment for PepsiCo Foods North America, Inna Kern, VP Media Planning and Strategy at ESPN (via video), and Bill Reardon, General Manager, Enterprise Platforms at Google Ads.
Unified Inventory, Biddable Sports
The Gemini-enabled GMP, said Martinez, “eliminates the chaos of fragmentation” by offering inventory across all the major players, understanding historical campaigns, and matching them to customer insights.
Google Display & Video 360 delivers 7.8 billion hours of ad supported watch time every month in the U.S. alone, and it’s the only platform with access to the top 3 streamers, YouTube, Disney+, and Netflix.
The next big investment push for DV360 is in the arena of programmatic live sports via the launch of AI-powered Live Sports Biddable Suite. Among other things, this will allow marketers to “connect with fans as they stream live on their CTV, and re-engage them as they scroll for game highlights on YouTube Shorts.”
Google also introduced YouTube Creator Takeovers, YouTube creator partnership boost, and Pause Ads to Display & Video 360.
New Gemini-enabled features in its YouTube Creator Partnerships Hub will allow advertisers to find creators that already produce content relevant to their brands using natural language prompts.
Ad-related Agents
Bill Reardon closed the presentation with an introduction to Ads Advisor, an agent that will help marketers with campaign setup, optimization and monitoring, and campaign reporting. These aren’t new concepts, but the AI-enablement allows advertisers to use natural language to do all of this “in the time it takes for a keynote presentation,” said Reardon.
Users will be able to upload media plans and “automatically translate it into a comprehensive campaign setup.” They’ll also be able to “track creative rejections and unlock insights” as well as “create tailored dashboards with customizable metrics.”
Other announcements
Confidential Publisher Match: the next generation identity model, now operating within Trusted Execution Environments. It connects a marketer’s first-party data with the streaming signals from publishers like Roku. “This way, you can reach your customers at scale with precision, and track their journey from a CTV impression to a final purchase — without extra workload,” says Google.
Commerce partnership with Kroger: Through a new collaboration between Kroger Precision Marketing and Display & Video 360, brands can now activate Kroger’s shopper audiences across YouTube and third-party inventory. To close the loop, new SKU-level reporting will help advertisers measure the impact of their spend on Kroger sales.