Predictions 2026 round table: six voices, one uncomfortable message

At a glance

1. Digital is no longer the automatic “safe” choice on cost, performance or attention.
2. Print’s case is strongest when it is sold in buyer language: outcomes, proof and usability.
3. “Less, but better” is emerging as the practical rule across retail, publishing and direct marketing.
4. AI helps, but weak systems, siloed teams and poor integration still kill results.
5. Premium and personalisation only work when they reduce friction, not add complexity.
6. The 2026 advantage is hybrid discipline: match channel to task, audience and context.

If there is a common thread running through our Predictions 2026 interviews, it is this: the industry is not short of tools, channels or ideas. It is short of operational honesty.

Across publishing, retail media, direct mail, digital print and media planning, our interviewees keep challenging the same habit — the tendency to cling to familiar stories long after the market has moved on. Digital will recover. AI will fix it. Print is too expensive. Personalisation automatically adds value. Cutting print is always “efficient”. None of those assumptions survives much contact with the evidence.

What emerges instead is a tougher, more useful picture of 2026: fewer myths, fewer vanity plays, more execution discipline.

1. Digital is no longer the default answer

James Hewes puts this most bluntly for magazine publishers: the idea that digital advertising will somehow “come back” and save the business is not a strategy. Ludovic Martin makes a similar point from a brand and acquisition perspective: paid digital may still be necessary, but it is becoming more expensive and less dependable, and many teams confuse short-term acquisition with long-term brand-building.

Vincent Peyrègne sharpens that argument from a different angle. His warning is not simply that publishers need better products, but that they are operating in a much deeper structural shift: economics, distribution, platform dependency and narrative control are all moving at once. In that context, “better digital news” on its own is too narrow a response. The real question is whether publishers can build broader, more resilient models around trust, reach and commercial control.

Jurgis Šķilters adds a different angle, but it lands in the same place. From a cognitive and behavioural perspective, digital’s supposed efficiency advantage is too often overstated. In many contexts, it brings speed but weaker comprehension, shallower processing and lower recall. That does not make digital irrelevant. It does make “digital-first by default” a weaker rule than it used to be.

Christophe Albericci’s retail perspective reinforces the point. If a channel reaches scale but loses attention, trust or proximity, it can become a false economy. In his framing, print remains commercially valuable not because of nostalgia, but because it still moves footfall and turnover when it is used properly.

The message across all four is consistent: digital is still central, but it no longer gets to win the argument by default.

2. Print does not need defending — it needs better execution

One of the strongest shared themes is that print’s problem is often not relevance. It is execution.

Albericci is clear that the winning retail model is “less, but better”: tighter targeting, better personalisation and stronger orchestration with digital touchpoints. The problem is not print itself; it is blunt cost-cutting, weak targeting and poor integration.

Martin says much the same from the online printing and direct marketing side. Brands are rediscovering direct mail and parcel inserts, but the work still breaks when CRM systems, product mapping, approvals and production workflows do not connect properly. Print can now fit far more naturally into automated marketing systems than many buyers assume — but only if teams do the integration work.

Guy Bibi makes the same argument in production terms. His warning is especially useful because it cuts through a lot of industry self-congratulation: brands do not pay a premium for “variation” by itself. They pay for confidence — faster launches, fewer errors, predictable execution and repeatable workflows. In other words, they pay for reduced friction. Personalisation and variable data become commercially compelling when they behave like infrastructure, not one-off creative showcases.

That is one of the clearest “round table” conclusions in the whole series: print becomes more valuable when it becomes easier to buy, easier to run and easier to prove.

3. AI is real, but it is not a substitute for a working model

AI appears in nearly every interview, but mostly as a test of maturity.

For publishers, Hewes and Vincent Peyrègne both point to a more basic problem than AI hype: weak operating models. Legacy systems, slow adoption, fragmented workflows and poor interoperability are still bigger constraints than the latest tooling. Peyrègne is particularly clear that newsroom AI upgrades and good journalism, while necessary, may not be enough on their own if publishers fail to address the larger business and distribution model around them.

For print production, Bibi is more optimistic about AI’s practical role — especially in scaling controlled variation and expanding what variable data can do — but he arrives at the same bottom line: if the workflow is chaotic, AI just scales the chaos.

Šķilters offers a useful corrective from the cognition side too. AI-driven media environments may accelerate consumption and flatten comprehension if advertisers and publishers do not become more deliberate about channel choice and message depth.

Put simply: AI can improve a strong system, but it does not rescue a weak one.

4. The strongest 2026 strategy is hybrid — but not in a vague way

“Hybrid” is one of those words the industry uses too loosely. In these interviews, it becomes much more concrete.

For Albericci, hybrid means print-digital orchestration that can actually be tracked: addressed mail, QR journeys, promotional offers and measurable conversion pathways.

For Martin, hybrid means CRM-linked print and automation workflows that let print behave like a modern activation channel instead of a disconnected production task.

For Bibi, hybrid means using printed identifiers (especially in packaging) as stable bridges into digital systems, not as gimmicks.

For Šķilters, hybrid means something even more basic and useful: match channel to task. If the goal is quick signalling, digital may be fine. If the goal is comprehension, memory or sustained attention, print may be the better tool.

Peyrègne also pushes the hybrid argument into strategic territory. For him, this is not only a channel-mix question; it is a sovereignty question. Who controls the audience relationship? Who controls distribution, data and monetisation? Publishers that rely too heavily on platform logic may gain short-term efficiency, but lose pricing power, positioning and long-term resilience. That makes “hybrid” less a media compromise and more a model of risk management.

So “hybrid” is not a compromise word here. It is a planning discipline.

5. What stronger teams are doing differently in 2026

Taken together, these six interviews point to a clearer set of winning habits for 2026:

- They choose channels by task, not habit.
- They sell print in outcome language: traffic, turnover, recall, attention and response.
- They invest in orchestration, not just channels.
- They treat AI as an accelerator for working systems, not a substitute for one.
- They reduce friction: fewer handoffs, cleaner workflows, faster launches, clearer proof.
- They use “less, but better” as a performance principle, not a budget slogan.
- They protect audience relationships and commercial control, not just reach.

The most useful shift in the series may be the simplest one: move from channel argument to operating quality. The strongest teams are not trying to “win” a print-versus-digital debate. They are building systems that make channel choice more intelligent, execution more reliable and outcomes easier to prove.

That is where the contributors converge, even when they come from very different parts of the market. Whether the subject is publisher economics, retail leaflets, direct mail, connected packaging or cognitive processing, the same pattern keeps emerging: advantage comes less from channel ideology than from execution quality.

The winners in 2026 will not be the people with the loudest story about the future. They will be the teams with the clearest proof, the best orchestration and the fewest points of friction. They will know what each channel is for, where print creates disproportionate value, where digital genuinely adds speed, and where AI improves a process rather than masking a weak one, and where control of the audience relationship matters most. They will be better at linking strategy to workflow, workflow to delivery, and delivery to evidence.

In that sense, 2026 may be less about innovation theatre and more about commercial discipline. And that is exactly why print remains so relevant: not as a nostalgia channel, but as part of a better-run, better-integrated and better-evidenced system.