The advertising industry is in the midst of one of the most seismic changes it has ever experienced. Wave after wave of technology disruption has been fundamentally reshaping agencies for the better part of three decades. Desperately seeking calmer waters feels like a fool’s errand – the reality is that the waves get bigger and keep coming faster and faster.
The only choice is to lean in, attempt to envision where technology will take us next, and learn to process the change faster and better than your competition.
But how?
There is perhaps no better place to study technology change than Las Vegas in early January. Nearly 150,000 people make an annual pilgrimage to the desert each year for CES, hoping to glean some nugget of insight that will help unlock the future. CES is a mecca for those seeking to peer around corners and shed a bit of light on an uncertain future.
Beyond the glitzy lights, gadget overload and endless barrage of companies claiming to have the next big thing, it is also one of the best places to study not just the what, but the how. How is technology reshaping our landscape? How is it changing the behavior of our target audiences? And perhaps most importantly, how do leaders process all of this change and turn it into competitive advantage?
That last question was our focus heading to CES 2026. The 4As released our annual Look Ahead report just a few weeks before the show, and the dueling futures we outlined, Agency as a Marketing Purveyor and Agency as a Strategic Partner, set an excellent backdrop for our exploration on the show floor. Whichever path, or combination of paths, your agency is pursuing, understanding the impact of emerging technology on the future of your business is crucial.
To help our member agencies with this daunting task, we’ve been studying how leaders across the ecosystem interpret and understand technology change. We conducted a series of interviews during CES 2026 focused on three simple questions:
- How do you keep up with the pace of change?
- What did you see on the show floor that excited you?
- If we did this interview again in two years, what will have changed?
We learned a lot. Not just about what was hot at CES 2026, but perhaps more importantly, we uncovered repeatable patterns that leaders use to process emerging technology implications, and we’ve organized them into 5 archetypes. They are presented below as discrete lenses that can be used to guide interpretations of emerging technologies.
Five Ways Agency Leaders Are Processing Change Right Now
None of these perspectives are wrong—and in practice, the leaders we spoke with exhibited traits from several of them at once. Each archetype offers a different lens on emerging tech, and it’s the combination that shapes how leaders interpret signals, navigate trade-offs and decide what to do next.
1. The Reframer
For the Reframer, technology shifts are less about disruption and more about resolution. This is the leader scanning the landscape and thinking, We’ve seen this before—what’s different now is that it finally works.
Reframers manage the pace of change by placing new technologies into longer arcs. They bucket what they see into familiar narratives—AI moving from experimentation to infrastructure, automation shifting from demos to deployment.
What excites the Reframer isn’t novelty, but maturity: technologies crossing from possibility to practicality. The Reframer’s CES observations focused on trends like quieter, more embedded AI—especially tools that disappeared into workflows rather than announcing themselves as breakthroughs. This lens can be stabilizing for teams and clients who need confidence, not hype.
“The best kind of technology is invisible—you’re not really thinking about it; it’s just there.” — Jason Lim, Assembly
2. The Outcome Filter
The Outcome Filter practices a results-first mentality, asking a single, persistent question: What actually changes outcomes?
Outcome Filters keep up with change by anchoring everything to performance. They look past shiny demos and speculative roadmaps and focus instead on what can drive results now—or soon enough to matter. Linear behaving more like digital, automation reducing friction, AI simplifying planning and execution—these are exciting not because they’re new, but because they promise fewer steps between effort and impact.
At shows like CES, the Outcome Filter spots signals that AI and automation are starting to measurably compress timelines and reduce operational friction—especially in planning, activation and optimization. The takeaway wasn’t what’s possible, but what’s finally efficient enough to matter. This lens is invaluable in an environment flooded with possibility. It brings discipline, focus and credibility to client conversations.
“Our priority is outcome first, and then it’s figuring out what pathway gets us there.” — Jason Hernandez, DIRECTV
3. The Ecosystem Decoder
This is the leader paying close attention to who is showing up, who is partnering with whom and where serious investment is being made.
Leaders operating through this lens keep up with change by staying close—to clients at the edge, to platform roadmaps and to partners building the underlying infrastructure. They’re less interested in individual product demos and more focused on signals of commitment: keynote narratives, partnerships and the parts of the ecosystem that are clearly accelerating.
Ecosystem decoders tend to focus not on a single announcement, but the pattern of alignment—who was investing deeply, who was missing and where roadmaps were starting to converge. These leaders keenly observe which bets were becoming structural rather than experimental. This lens is especially powerful for agency leaders tasked with translating chaos into direction. It helps separate passing ideas from structural shifts.
“You really have to stay close to your partners and networks to understand what’s actually progressing and what’s still just noise.” — Keith Soljacich, Publicis Media
4. The Hands-On Interpreter
For the Hands-On Interpreter, understanding the implications of emerging tech requires experimentation. This is the leader who believes you can’t fully understand what’s changing unless you’ve seen it work, touched it or tried to break it yourself.
Hands-On Interpreters keep up with change through immersion. They value being on the show floor at CES, experimenting with tools and seeing technologies in action—especially where AI crosses into the physical world. Robots, wearables, intelligent environments: these are compelling because they replace abstraction with intuition. At CES, these leaders were impressed by physical AI that actually worked—systems with dexterity, responsiveness and real-world constraints. The excitement came from seeing technology behave under pressure, not from polished demos.
This lens brings urgency and clarity. It helps agency leaders move beyond slides and speculation and develop a gut‑level understanding of what’s real.
“You can’t really understand what’s changing unless you’re actually trying the tools and seeing how they behave in the real world.” — Lori H. Schwartz, StoryTech
5. The Consequence Thinker
For the Consequence Thinker, changing tech is less about devices or platforms and more about people. This is the leader listening for shifts in trust, adoption, and expectation—asking not just what can we do, but how will this change how people behave, decide, and relate to brands and institutions?
Consequence Thinkers process change by zooming out. They pay close attention to how AI-mediated experiences are reshaping judgment, authenticity and the role of human agency. Emerging tech, through this lens, feels intellectually rich but emotionally complex—full of promise, but also full of second-order considerations that aren’t easily solved by better tools alone. Consequence Thinkers saw growing unease alongside excitement at CES 2026—especially around trust, transparency and what happens when synthetic content becomes indistinguishable from human expression. The takeaway wasn’t a product, but a question: what responsibilities grow as capability accelerates? This lens brings depth and foresight. It helps agency leaders anticipate downstream effects and avoid short-term thinking that erodes trust or meaning.
“Change is difficult, but irrelevance is even worse. And the hardest part is that nobody really knows exactly how this all plays out—we’re making it up as we go.” — Rishad Tobaccowala, Author, Speaker, Advisor
How Agency Leaders Can Use These Archetypes to Interpret Emerging Tech Signals
Taken together, these archetypes offer agency leaders a way to make sense of emerging technologies without defaulting to hype or paralysis. They’re not meant to be used in isolation. Their value comes from using them together to interrogate new tech—and uncover what you might otherwise miss.
A platform announcement may look compelling through an Outcome Filter, while raising trust or adoption questions for a Consequence Thinker. A robotics demo might energize a Hands-On Interpreter, while a Reframer asks whether it marks a true inflection point or the culmination of a longer arc.
This multi-lens approach helps leaders move beyond first reactions. Used this way, the archetypes become less about categorization and more about cadence—a repeatable way to process signals, surface trade-offs and turn insight into an evolving roadmap.
Check out the full CES 2026 interview playlist
Explore the 4As 2026 Look Ahead: Where Agencies Go Next—By Design, Not Default
Jeremy Lockhorn, aka Scout, Filter and Architect is SVP of Innovative Technology at the 4As. His core focus and expertise lies in helping member agencies and the industry at large navigate the turbulent waters of emerging technologies, separate the paradigm shifts from the parlor tricks and architect solutions to capitalize on new opportunities while mitigating risk.
