Author: Michael Bürgi

Ending up your first six weeks as global CEO of an agency holding company that’s been struggling with a major retention of a global client is pretty solid. So it has been for Takeshi Sano, who at the end of March took over Dentsu.

On Friday, Heineken announced the winners of its global media, production and creative review, keeping its global media business parked at Dentsu. (Publicis will handle “global secondary production” as well as creative for the Heineken brand itself, while Publicis, WPP, and Stagwell will handle various creative work for its other brands — Amstel, Birra Moretti, Desperados, and Tiger.) 

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This is an excerpt from our Digiday+ Research report “The marketer’s guide to AI applications, agentic AI, AI search and GEO/AEO in 2026,” which explores how marketers are navigating the opportunities and challenges AI brings as it becomes an indispensable part of marketing. The report is based on a survey of 142 brand and agency professionals, as well as individual interviews with marketing and technology executives responsible for AI investments and applications development.

Marketers feel the effects of AI-generated search

The number of AI-powered search applications is growing. Google introduced its AI Overviews search function in 2024, followed by AI Mode in 2025, while OpenAI rolled out its ChatGPT chatbot in 2022, later integrating a conversational search feature. Anthropic’s AI assistant Claude and “answer engine” Perplexity also feature conversational search results.

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