Advertising Week New York opens Monday at The Penn District, and the guest list alone tells you how much the industry has changed in twelve months.

Digiday's annual guide to what's in and what's out for Advertising Week NY 2026 captures a business that has moved on quickly from last year's debates. Three shifts stand out, and each one points in the same direction: the traditional intermediaries of advertising are losing their grip on the conversation.

The first shift: OpenAI now sells ads. Digiday puts OpenAI's vice president of monetization on the "in" list for this year's event. That a generative AI company has built an ad sales operation — and that its monetization executive is now a draw at advertising's biggest tent — would have been unthinkable at last year's edition. The pairing Digiday chose for the contrast is telling. On the "out" list sits Perplexity's head of publisher partnerships, a role built around the AI search company's deals with media owners. The swap signals where advertiser attention is drifting: from AI firms negotiating content partnerships to AI firms selling advertising directly.

The second shift: creators no longer need the room. Digiday's framing is blunt. Creators now pitch brands without an agency in the room. That single sentence describes a structural change in how marketing budgets get spent. For decades, Advertising Week existed largely as a convening of agencies, media companies and brands. If creators are reaching brands directly, the agency seat at the table — the one Advertising Week was built around — becomes one option among several rather than a default.

The third shift: AI agents have started shopping. Digiday notes that AI agents have begun doing the shopping for their owners. Combine that with OpenAI's ad sales team and the picture sharpens. The consumer journey may increasingly run through an automated intermediary that decides what products surface — before any human sees a display ad, a search result or a creator endorsement. That scenario reframes what "media" means at an event like this one.

Dhar Mann's title change is the tell. Digiday's in-and-out list includes one more pairing that rewards a close read. "Making Dhar Mann chief creator officer" is in. "Making Dhar Mann a speaker" is out. The distinction matters. A speaker slot treats a creator as a guest invited to explain the creator economy to an industry audience. A chief creator officer title puts a creator inside the operating structure of a company, with authority over how creator content gets made and deployed. The industry has stopped consulting creators and started hiring them.

Taken together, the four items sketch a coherent trajectory. AI companies have moved from talking partners to ad sellers. Creators have moved from panelists to executives. And the AI agent has appeared as a new actor between brands and buyers — one that does not attend conferences, does not respond to pitches and does not need an agency.

For marketers heading to The Penn District on Monday, the agenda questions write themselves. The industry that gathers there will look different again next year if OpenAI's monetization business scales and agent-driven commerce moves from novelty to norm.