Week 5 - Media Buying in 2026: data-driven decisions, evolving buyer roles, and new training skills

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Welcome back to The Checkout Point, New week, New way to break Your brain about eCommerce.

Hey Max And Hey everyone listening!

This One Is for The media buyers, The CMOs And honestly anyone staring At a ROAS dashboard

At 11pm wondering If The number even means anything anymore.

Chuckling, So all of us.

Today Wevee got Stewart Pratt to unpack What media buying actually looks Like In 2026,

where real-time modelled signals are doing The heavy lifting instead of just dashboards.

Yeah, Weree asking What changed In The last year, Whatss about to change next year,

And who actually survives When The machines are optimizing every bid In real-time without

tanking Your margins In The process.

Right.

First SEGMENT, Weree talking evolution of data-driven decisions, And Imm genuinely

excited about This One.

We went from I think This works to The model said no, And That shift's been years In

The making for me.

Then Welll dig into The media buyer role itself, How it's shifting from button clicking

inside ad managers to being more Like a consultant who has to understand brand PLL, Not just

CPM, Because honestly Thatss where The game actually Is.

Exactly.

Less, Whatss our lookalike audience, And more, Is This product actually solid And How

do We prove it With clean data?

Thatss The CRO mindset Ivee been preaching since my eCommerce days, now applied to

media buying.

And finally, Welll hit media buyer training In 2026.

Behavioral economics, creative testing, understanding Your client's actual unit economics.

The stuff That separates people who run campaigns from people who run profitable ones.

Yeah, The era of here's a course, go run a million bucks In budget Is dead.

I spent years In CRO watching That blow up, Thatss just budget waste disguised As learning.

Seriously.

Illl bring In war stories from my Amazon And Walmart days where We obsessed over One

KPI.

Did This media spend actually move The needle on profitability?

Not vanity metrics.

Real money.

Wild concept.

Actually making money instead of just burning cash.

Novel idea, I know.

I know, radical concept.

But If you care about ROI, team skill development, And Not just ad spend volume In 2026, Youree

going to want to hear What Stuart has to say.

Letss get into it.

This Is The stuff Ivee been nerding out on for years.

First up, How data-driven decisions actually evolved And What That means for Your next

campaign.

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Hello, How are you doing?

Imm doing great.

Thanks for asking.

Welcome to The show, Stuart.

With 25 years In marketing And data science, What are The most significant shifts you have

seen In How agencies approach consumer data?

Wow, Thatss a really great question.

I mean, over The last 20 years, The thing Ivee really noticed Is much more familiarity

With data, much more comfort With data, And being able to use data to drive data-driven

decisions.

When I First got into This game, you know, it was really difficult to get people to really

buy into data-backed decisions, data-driven media optimizations And media placements.

But over time, Wevee really become an industry That Is comfortable With data And relies on

data to make some very difficult decisions, But also make those decisions very fast.

The Speed of decision making Is fascinating. How do you see The role of The media buyer

evolving by 2026 As data becomes even more integrated into The process?

Yeah, I think over The next year, The role of The media buyer Is more of a media consultant,

more of a communications planner. I see The role of The media buyer shifting to One Which Is

focused more on helping guide brands And guide clients And their teams to really think about

building truly integrated media plans And really focused on driving business growth.

And Thatss a little bit different from The past When media buyers And planners,

They really focused on implementing a media plan That potentially The client or They had

agreed upon, But Not As much As a consultant, more As a implementer of The media buy, Right?

With a few relatively interesting ideas added In, it became much more of a perfunctory type role

And really was focused a lot on reporting And optimization. And I think those goals of reporting

And optimization, focusing on How We optimize specific placements, How We optimize creative,

Thatss really moving away. Weree letting algorithms run That process. Weree letting

automated reporting do some of The job of keeping clients And teams up to date on data And

information, allowing algorithms to find The Right audiences to optimize towards The optimal audience,

really focused on allowing those parts of The process to be automated through technology,

Right? The delivery portion. But The strategy portion, cramming up With really creative

opportunities for media placement. I see That As being really The next phase.

In some ways, it's a return to How media buying And planning was maybe 15 years ago When it was

directly purchased through relationships With companies, Right? The media buyer had a direct

relationship With The publisher And could identify or create inventory opportunities

And create unique placements. As We moved to programmatic, We got away from That a bit.

We moved more towards The media buyer And planner, really just making sure That inventory

was available And coming up With media plans That Were integrated But weren't necessarily unique.

I think Weree moving back to a place where The media buyer has That ability to begin to think

about unique placements, unique executions, And to become a Real consultant to brands on How They

can grow their business, Not just sell a product. That Is a profound shift toward a more strategic

And consultative approach. How do you think This return to unique, relationship-based placements

will change The way media buyers are trained or The skills They need to prioritize?

I think media buyers need to prioritize more than ever a Real understanding of client business.

They need to understand The business model That The client works With. They need to understand

more about their specific audience And really understand about consumer behavior.

One of The things That We moved away from for a while was having media buyers focus on

behavioral economics, focusing on How consumers buy, why They buy,

What are The moments In Which We can engage them. We did a lot of consumer mapping 15,

20 years ago, But We moved away from That a bit When We really focused on just

most media Is going to go through social media search. We limited where We placed

media, where We placed creative, And How We delivered communications. We really narrowed

That down And limited it. I think One of The skills That media buyers are going to need to

develop Is to go back to developing That ability to understand consumers, to do more research

into consumers, to understand a broader array of media When They are engaging With brands.

Ultimately, developing The skill of being a consultant, of providing consultative

support for clients And teams And brands Is going to be really critical.

Part of That, As I mentioned, Is understanding their business. How does The business make money?

What attracts consumers to That business? How can I be a partner In a brand's growth,

more than just thinking about How I can place a particular piece of creative for maximum reach?

Okay, I did Not expect to walk away from That feeling

slightly terrified for every slow media buyer on earth.

Yeah, Stewart basically said If you need a weekly report to make a decision,

Youree done by 2026. At scale operations, That bottleneck alone kills Your margins.

Speed Is The New targeting. The way He framed it, media buyers moving

from button pushers to real-time portfolio managers, That hit me. Youree Not just

Optimizing ads. Youree reallocating millions Like a trader watching a live market.

And With, What did He say, 70-80% of tactical decisions getting automated by AI,

The human edge becomes judgment And business context, Not who can tweak bids faster.

Exactly. The machines do The What, The media buyer owns The why And So What.

If Youree still arguing about Which lookalike audience to use In 2026,

The algorithm already ate Your lunch And Your dessert.

And sent you The bill.

There it Is.

What really stuck With me was his Point on training.

He said future media buyers will be more Like consultants or many CMOs.

Youree expected to understand margin structure, LTV, cash flow, The Real business levers.

Thatss The ops mindset I lived At Walmart And Amazon.

Yes. He basically said, If you can't explain Your media plan In terms of payback window

And contribution margin, Youree Not senior. Youree just expensive.

I felt That.

I remember early on, my big KPI was lowering CPC.

I had clients who didn't care Because it wasn't moving revenue or profit.

Stewartss saying, In 2026, That gap won't be tolerated.

Your KPIs have to map straight to The PNL or Youree just moving decimal points.

And they'll expect you to prove it In Real time.

I loved his line about dashboards going from reporting What happened

to arguing for What should happen next.

Thatss a massive mindset shift.

Which ties to his data Point about decisions moving from weekly to hourly.

Youree Not waiting for end-of-month ROS.

Youree hunting leading indicators, conversion velocity,

cohort behavior, refund rates As a profit signal, And adjusting on The fly.

The part That surprised me was his warning about overfitting to The dashboard.

Like, Yes, everything's data-driven, But he's seeing The best media buyers In 2026

push back on pretty numbers That Dontt line up With What sales Is feeling on The ground.

He called it cross-validating Your truth, Which I loved.

Dontt just trust platform ROAS.

Validate it With actual cash In The bank, CRM data, And retention.

I learned That lesson The hard way At scale.

So, If We had to boil it down, move faster,

think bigger, And stop hiding behind surface-level metrics.

And start training media buyers Like business strategists,

Not ad-ops robots. Thatss where The Real competitive edge lives In 2026.

Alright, Letss wrap it There.

Stick around, Weree heading into The OUTRO,

And Welll share How to start leveling up Your media buying before 2026 gets here.

Alright, We should probably land This plane before I start A-B testing The OUTRO, too.

Please Dontt.

That shift from button clickers to strategic partners?

Thatss What I watched happen At Amazon And Walmart When operations started owning The PLL.

Thatss The headline for me.

Yeah, totally.

Like, If Your value Is, I know where The buttons are, AI Is coming for Your lunch,

Is, I know where The buttons are, AI Is coming for Your lunch.

But If Your value Is decisions, context, And creative testing,

Thatss The CRO stuff I spent years living for. And Youree fine.

Exactly. One sentence takeaway?

The media buyers who win are The ones who move from dashboards to decisions

And tie every move back to ROI. Thatss Not optional anymore.

So, If This episode got you thinking about whether Youree a button clicker

or a strategist, hit subscribe, share This With That One ad nerd In Your Slack,

leave a review, And keep it Real.

Yeah, And If Youree listening on Your commute or In The gym,

mentally note to hit subscribe And drop a review When Youree back At Your desk.

Seriously, those help us keep bringing guests Like Stuart who actually know their numbers.

Thanks for hanging out With us on The Checkout Point.

Wevee got some Wild stuff coming up on where all This AI-driven buying goes next,

And Imm asking The tough questions about who actually controls The margins.

So, basically, Dontt blank.

Dontt blank, Dontt overspend, And keep Your margins honest.

Perfect combo. Welll see you next time.

Until next time.