Where is growth coming from in 2026?

As Malaysia's media agencies look toward 2026, the question isn’t just where growth will come from, it’s how to build it with more intention. After years of rapid shifts, the industry is settling into a phase where outcome-based models, predictive planning, and AI-enabled systems are becoming the new baseline. Agencies are moving past experimentation and into execution, focusing on growth that’s measurable, meaningful, and closely tied to business results rather than volume or legacy metrics.

Across the board, there’s a clear push toward convergence: media, data, creativity, commerce, and culture are no longer separate lanes but part of one connected growth engine. AI is helping teams work faster and plan smarter, but the heartbeat still lies with people. Hybrid talent who can stitch insight, technology, and empathy into ideas that travel further and perform harder. Budgets in 2026 are expected to reward agility, regional scalability, and tools that bring clarity to an increasingly complex marketplace.

At the core of it all is a mindset shift. Growth isn’t about collecting more platforms or tech; it’s about making everything work better together, from content and creators to commerce infrastructure and data signals. Malaysian agencies are gearing up for a year defined by smarter systems, tighter integration, and teams ready to move at the speed of culture.

Below, A+M spoke with media agency leaders to explore how they’re reshaping capability, talent, and technology to unlock growth in 2026.

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Audrey Chong, CEO, dentsu Malaysia

2026 must be a year of recalibration, where we pause to ask: what kind of growth do we want? We have spent the past few years adapting to constant change, it is now time to rethink how our industry measures impact, and how we can make that impact count.

For agencies, that means moving towards impact-led partnerships and outcome-based models, where the value of our work is defined by the business results we create, not the hours it takes.

Technology will continue to play a big role, with AI and automation helping us to work smarter, and unlocking new efficiencies that will free us to focus on insight, creativity, and human connection.

But the real spark, and our greatest differentiator, will come from human talent.

The ones who can ultimately connect data and creativity with empathy, to translate ideas that will move consumers and culture.

That is why, even as cautious optimism defines budgets, the real investment must go into building our people. Our role will be to give them the training, tools, and trust to thrive and reskill fast enough in order to stay relevant.

Darren Yuen, CEO, IPG Mediabrands

2026 will be about operating change rather than talking about it. The next big wave won’t just be AI, it’ll be AI-fused accountability, powering a new era of outcome-based consultancy.

At IPG Mediabrands Malaysia, we’re architecting our focus to becoming an 'Intelligent impact' agency. This is where consultancy, martech, and commerce become core service engines, and where AI transforms every planning, buying, and creative decision into measurable growth actions.

Budgets next year won’t reward volume, they’ll reward agility on investments that can pivot and perform in real time with clients’ evolving needs.

Predictive planning, AI copilots, and creative automation will be central to how we drive business outcomes, not just media outputs.

Our single focus for 2026, is 'Outcome intelligence', where we turn media from a service into an impactful performance system. We’re not waiting for disruption. We’re building it into our model.

Winnie Chen-Head, CEO, OMG Malaysia

Malaysia’s media scene is entering an exciting new chapter. It’s no longer just about integration but true convergence. Real growth starts when media, creativity, commerce, and data come together. 

Growth isn’t just a goal but the natural outcome of connecting every touchpoint with intention and clarity.

Growth isn’t just a goal but the natural outcome of connecting every touchpoint with intention and clarity.

In 2026, technology will be a major game changer. Our Omni advanced intelligence platform, built over the last decade and now enhanced with advanced AI automation and capabilities, empowers marketers to predict what’s coming instead of simply reacting. Innovation like this is the heartbeat of change. Leading means setting the standard and helping brands move forward with confidence.

Budgeting next year is all about agility and impact. We’re investing deeply in people, tools, and regional strengths so we can scale quickly and create brand stories that truly resonate. At the centre of it all are our people. Investing in their learning and skills is not just preparing for the future, it’s shaping it. Growth comes from strong connections, clear foresight, and a team ready to rise together. 

I'm energised by the possibilities ahead in 2026.

Amit Sutha, CEO, Publicis Groupe Malaysia

Real magic sits in the intersections, not the inventions. For us the future of marketing isn’t about finding the next shiny thing, it’s about connecting the ones we already have and making them work smarter, harder, and together. 

We don’t want to espouse transformation. We want to show what marketing looks like with its sleeves rolled up.

When Lotame’s deep audience understanding meets Hepmil’s hyperlocal creator instinct, all running on Captiv8’s tech backbone, you get precision that moves at the speed of culture.

Our focus next year is to build more of these intelligent connections across the Groupe, where ideas travel faster, land sharper, and waste less. Because the future won’t belong to those who collect toys, it’ll belong to those who know how to make them play together.


Sivanathan Krishnan, chairman and co-founder, Trapper Group

As we look toward 2026, we’re directing investments to strengthen our core as a growth-focused, future-ready agency. This means nurturing a new breed of hybrid talent—people who blend insight, creativity, and data with confidence—and equipping them with tools and systems that sharpen their work.

We believe Malaysia’s next big shift isn’t more AI, it’s commerce infrastructure.

Media intelligence is racing ahead of conversion systems, and brands that fix the foundation beneath their media will scale. As a leading media agency in the country, we’re driving greater credibility in an increasingly skeptical digital landscape by focusing on technologies that build trust and resilience through AI explainability, content provenance, and ethical data practices.

We’re also enhancing forecasting, optimisation, and experimentation so our teams can spend more time engineering business growth for clients. By building a more agile, integrated growth engine, we’re preparing our teams, and our clients, for sustained success in a fast-changing, commerce-driven landscape.

Arshan Saha, CEO, WPP Media Singapore & Malaysia, MM&D APMEA

Content, commerce and culture powered by the proliferation of AI will and already is at the centre of the Malaysia media ecosystem.

Malaysia’s social‑currency led consumer engagement, across both the rural and urban populations is redefining the equation of brand to performance within the battlegrounds of social platforms.

Awareness, consideration and conversion now happen at speed and agility.

In 2026, we’ll lean into customising an operating system with clients that automates the content-commerce-culture workflow and unifies all forms of data signals in a privacy-compliant way, to predict audience, creative, and shoppable touchpoints that power conversations. Predictive performance marketing powered by client collaboration and agentic AI will be at the core of this deliverable.

Budgeting needs to be dynamic in an era where consumers are. Structured data and AI will allow for predictive data models to set flexible guardrails, then reallocate in‑flight to the platforms, creators and formats driving sales outcomes. Spend will increasingly follow conversational engagement in social, with more weight on influencer/affiliate and social commerce. The operating model: outcome‑led, agile optimisation, tighter link between media and transaction.

Our key area of focus will be transformation — both for our clients and within our own organisation. We’ll help marketers move from media‑centric plans to integrated content‑commerce‑culture activation across the full in‑platform funnel. Internally, we’ll upskill talent and standardise on a single automation‑first tech stack, so teams spend less time on manual tasks and more on upstream strategy, creativity and partnership—delivering faster decisions and better results.

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