As digital marketers and designers move toward 2026, it’s clear that simply producing a couple of ad sizes per campaign is no longer enough. The convergence of AI, Connected TV (CTV), and retail media is transforming how we think about, design, and deliver creative across channels. If you’re responsible for display campaigns or creative ops, it’s no longer about ticking off requirements. It’s about building a resilient system that can thrive as buying, testing, and format requirements change fast. Below, we map out what this new landscape means for real creative teams, with concrete actions for agencies and in-house teams looking to own 2026 instead of being caught flat-footed.
The Shifting Landscape: Why Display in 2026 Is a System, Not a Silo
The definition of display advertising is expanding. Programmatic spend is still growing, but we’re seeing real budget reallocations toward streaming, CTV/OTT, and retail networks. There’s no room for fragmented, single-format workflows—your display assets now have to plug into CTV, feed retail placements, and take direction from AI. In practical terms, campaign launches will need to cover more formats, faster, without added labor or inconsistent branding.
AI Is Your Creative Engine: What Changes for Production in 2026
We’re past the old era of AI being mostly for targeting or bidding. Now, AI is about producing and optimizing the creative itself. Here’s what that means for teams like ours:
- AI-generated variants are standard. Expect more ad versions per campaign, made possible by AI copy and auto-layout, but they still must follow clear brand and compliance rules.
- Testing and live optimization move fast. Instead of shipping one design, you’ll need a blend of headline, visual, and CTA variations, rotated and optimized intelligently. This is not optional—the speed of programmatic means it’s a cost of entry.
- Flexible, modular assets win. Creative is now built so AI (or your own team) can rapidly resize, reformat, and recombine it for CTV, display, and retail media.
Connected TV (CTV): Creative Specs and Best Practices to Nail
As more budgets shift to CTV, marketers need to prep creative that works for TV screens and their unique requirements. Here are the essentials for 2026:
- Resolutions: 1920 × 1080 px (Full HD) and 1280 × 720 px (HD)
- Aspect ratio: 16:9
- Durations: 6s, 15s, and 30s (for bumpers and standard spots)
- Companion banners: 300 × 250, 728 × 90, 300 × 600 px essential for many proposals
- File types: MP4 for video (H.264 codec), JPG/PNG for banners, usually under 150 MB (video) or 200 KB (static companions)
Performance guidelines also matter:
- Upfront branding: Brand assets in the first two seconds—this is critical since TV viewers can’t click away easily
- Text legibility: Minimum 40 px for body, very little copy per scene
- Silent clarity: Assume most viewers won’t hear audio—visual storytelling trumps all
- Interactive cues: Include QR codes or “search for” prompts to connect CTV with web and retail activity
CTV-to-Display Alignment
We recommend storyboarding in a 16:9 aspect ratio, then extracting several key frames for display and retail units. With platforms like SizeIM, you can instantly transform hero visuals into all your standard banner sizes without manual rework. For deeper CTV requirements and tips, check our CTV/OTT Creative Specs 2025 post for more details.
Retail Media in 2026: Creative Constraints and Workflow Advice
Retail media is growing fast, merging performance marketing and high standards for creative compliance. Typical specs look like:
- Banners:
- 300 × 250, 728 × 90, 970 × 250, 160 × 600, 300 × 600 px for on-site placements
- Product tiles: Large square or 4:5 ratios, such as 1000 × 1000 px, often with minimal text and strict logo placement
Rules you need to heed:
- Keep text brief: Often no more than 20-30% of the banner area as text
- No misleading offers: Claims must match product detail page info
- Brand plus product focus: Prioritize a clean, centered product shot, with the logo in a fixed corner
- Speed matters: Small, lightweight files (sub-150 KB) are now standard
The smart play: start with large, clean masters (like 2000 × 2000 px product images and 970 × 250 banners), then generate all required sizes with a platform that ensures layout and brand consistency. SizeIM’s holiday requirements guide for retail media is a valuable resource for building out your prep list.
Display Ad Kit: Core Sizes and Layout Notes for 2026
2026 will be about coverage—can you launch every campaign with a kit of formats tuned for each major channel? Here are the sizes you should always have ready for programmatic, CTV companions, and retail media:
- Rectangles & Squares: 300 × 250, 336 × 280, 250 × 250, 200 × 200 px
- Banners: 468 × 60, 234 × 60, 728 × 90, 320 × 50, 970 × 90, 970 × 250, 320 × 100 px
- Skyscrapers & Portrait: 120 × 240, 300 × 600, 120 × 600, 160 × 600, 300 × 1050 px
This is the core set enabled by SizeIM’s multi-size generation tools. Design once, then multiply across formats without manual messing with spacing, cropping, or text size. For more on technical requirements and optimization, visit our in-depth coverage in 2025 Display Ad Sizes and File Limits by Network.
Layout Best Practices for Small Formats
- Headlines: Keep to 35-45 characters for rectangles, even less for leaderboards and mobile sizes
- CTAs: 2-3 words, simple and strong (“Shop Now,” “Book Demo”)
- Minimal hierarchy: For skyscraper and portrait units, use a top-to-bottom brand-image-offer structure with no more than three visual elements
This ensures your creative is legible, performs well, and can be easily tested and iterated.
Omnichannel Workflows: Make Display, CTV, Retail Media, and DOOH Work Together
One of our key learnings is that ad channels are converging. With DOOH (Digital Out of Home) buying and CTV increasingly programmatic, the creative toolkit needs to handle all screens seamlessly. Mastering this—using a single system to adapt assets for outdoor, in-app, and CTV environments—will be a defining feature of the most agile creative teams.
Our approach? Design in standard 16:9 and square ratios, then adapt for everything else automatically. Stick to a clearly defined brand kit storing all your core elements, so no matter the format, your message is unmistakable and trusted. If you want to dive deeper on operational efficiency and template SOPs, our blog Year-End Creative Ops Audit may be helpful.
AI-Driven Creative Testing: The New Baseline for Performance Optimization
With AI making it feasible to launch dozens of variants per format, creative testing becomes an automatic, fundamental part of campaign building. The best results come from:
- Multiple headline approaches (benefit, outcome, problem)
- Different visual emphasis (interface vs. outcome imagery)
- Varied CTAs
Set up systems for live creative testing and let your DSP or ad server rotate creatives, then optimize based on real clicks or conversion data. Crucially, lock down your brand kit (logo sets, color palette, font stack) inside your platform so all variants stay on-brand. For more tips on creative testing and AI, check out AI-Driven Ad Resizing vs. Manual Templates and The Ultimate Guide to Sprite Sheets, Lottie, and Video.
Concrete 90-Day Plan: Make Your Team 2026-Ready
- Weeks 1-2: Audit and standardize
- Map your current ad sizes and turnaround times
- Lock in a core format list (like the ones detailed above)
- Document channel-specific creative requirements
- Weeks 3-5: Set up templates and workflow
- Build or import your master creative templates into SizeIM
- Create a centralized brand kit for all your brands, so every ad shares design DNA
- Integrate your AI copy/creative testing methodology, with clear prompt and length guardrails
- Weeks 6-8: Execute your first campaign with variants
- Use your new system to output all core sizes for a real campaign
- Deploy multiple copy/image variants per format for testing and optimization
- Monitor how much time and error you save, versus last year’s manual process
- Weeks 9-12: Refine and scale
- Measure performance and production speed
- Fine-tune your templates and brand kit based on learning from the field
- Roll out the workflow across all brands, agencies, or end clients you serve
Bringing It All Together: Future-Proofing Your Creative Operations
By 2026, the winners in digital marketing will be those who can deliver instantly adjustable creative systems—connecting AI, display, CTV, and retail media into a seamless process. As budgets and formats shift, our team at SizeIM is committed to building tools and sharing guidance to help digital marketers, agencies, and designers get ahead instead of catching up.
If your goal is to design once and launch everywhere—without laborious manual resizing or losing sight of your brand—SizeIM is here to help you future-proof your workflow.
