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Marketers Lean Into IRL Events as Digital Ad Fatigue Sets In
Brand marketers are shifting budget toward in-person events and out-of-home campaigns as consumers grow numb to a flood of online content. The approach favors small neighborhood meet-ups over closed-door gatherings, according to executives speaking at the 2026 Advertising Week conference.
Neda Whitney, president and managing partner at Matte Projects, said at the 2026 Advertising Week conference that she and many other consumers have grown numb to social media content, describing the current landscape as a sea of sameness that makes brands hard to distinguish.
That fatigue is set against a backdrop of rising ad spend. According to Digitally Applied, a boutique digital marketing consultancy, global advertising expenditure reached $740 billion this year, with 73% of it directed to digital channels, up 11.4% year over year. The result is more competition among marketers and more weariness among the audiences they are trying to reach.
Whitney said the conditions have pushed her agency deeper into in-person eventing and out-of-home campaigns for clients including Oura, Estée Lauder and Moose Knuckles Canada. In her view, an IRL moment asks people to invest time in traveling to a location, and every touchpoint inside that room communicates something about the brand.
One example came this summer in New York City, where Matte Projects ran a pop-up during the U.S. Open for Oura's Model 5 Ring. The activation had a single primary objective: making sure every visitor was properly sized for a ring, which Whitney identified as the biggest barrier to entry for the brand.
Reese Pozgay, senior vice president of brand and marketing at Moose Knuckles Canada, also took part in the conversation about community-building through live events.
The format itself is changing, with closed-door events giving way to intimate neighborhood meet-ups designed to build deeper connections in a shorter window of time.