The fourth wave of the Russian AdTech 2026 market study, conducted by AKAR and the Analytical Centre for Internet Advertising Development, found that six in ten companies are willing to hand over ad content creation to artificial intelligence.
The shift from experimentation to practice is underway. Readiness to trust AI with content production does not yet equal widespread deployment — the study captures intent rather than established practice — but the ratio itself signals that distrust of machine-generated advertising has fallen significantly.
For the AdTech market, this translates to rising demand for tools that automate creative and copy generation. Companies that have embedded AI into content production already gain speed and cost advantages in iteration cycles.
In performance marketing, the pace of creative production directly affects ROI. If 60% of advertisers are open to AI-generated content, client expectations shift: approvals move faster, hypothesis testing accelerates. Teams running high-volume A/B tests will see shorter launch cycles and lower cost per acquired lead as psychological barriers on the buyer side weaken.
The study covers the Russian market and its regulatory context. Real adoption rates likely lag the stated readiness — companies may declare openness to AI while still demanding manual review of every text. The gap between intention and process tends to be wider than surveys suggest. Still, the direction is clear: generative AI is becoming a standard production tool, not an outlier in advertising budgets.
