What AI disruption means for experimental ad budgets

Experimental Channels What AI disruption means for experimental ad budgets By Kimeko McCoy  •  March 30, 2026  • Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Reddit Ivy Liu Experimental ad budgets are getting a second look nowadays. AI platforms are rolling out ad products, tried and true channels are more saturated than ever and marketers are desperate to find new audiences.  Those marketers are revamping their test-and-learn budgets to account for things like generative search optimization (GEO), ChatGPT pilot ads and even out-of-home. Agencies say there’s a larger appetite to test the unknowns, shift KPIs and expectations for the sake of scale and incrementality. In some cases, that’s growing the budget. In others, it’s shifting existing dollars away from so-called guaranteed performance channels to experimental places like AI ads or retail media.  Dollars shifting out of performance Take performance marketing shop Markacy for example. Historically, the agency followed an 80-20 rule: 80% of spend goes to core media and 20% to experimenting.  “There’s a little bit of a tailwind for a bigger expansion budget that might be getting closer to 25% or something like that,” said Christopher Jones, co-founder and co-CEO at Markacy. Over the past year, the agency has seen clients more willing to shift dollars out of Meta and Google and into new channels, like CTV, YouTube, linear, direct mail, out of home and retail media networks.  It’s a similar story at creative media agency Noble People. Dollar...