4 B2B video ad trends for 2026

Speaker A: Howdy, and welcome back to Death to the Corporate Video. My name is Guy Bauer. I'm the founder and creative director of Umalt, a B2B video ad agency. And today I have four B2B video ad trends for 2026 for you. But first, just a quick personal update, or I guess this is a business update. But, uh, we wrapped our feature film on of the Cleaner about a month and a week ago. But then, um, we had a bunch of client work, and I also went on a spring break trip to Moab, Utah, but back halfway through editing the film, and then fully back into the B2B video ad business. All right, so here are four trends I'm seeing in 2026. Uh, number one is, and this I have empirical proof that brands are starting to write scripts with AI. I can't tell you the number of leads we've gotten at umalt, where the client now is presenting us with scripts. Now, do I have proof that they're written with AI? No, but it was very rare back before AI that a client would ever come with a script. Um, now I would say most of our leads say, hey, you know, like, here's a script. Um, now at umalt, I always say, you know, we'll take your script into account, but we're going to, you know, do a full creative strategy and all that stuff. But to me, I think you can use this as an advantage, is that most of your competitors are now starting to try to, you know, save money, uh, and outsource their creative to AI. And I'm not an AI hater at all. Um, um, but I can tell you, and I'm current, you know, on ChatGPT and all the stuff, um, is it still can't write scripts like it writes scripts. It writes totally normal scripts. So if you're looking to make something absolutely normal that nobody will comment on, positive or negative, and you can kind of just stay under the radar like a reality show contestant. If you're looking for something like that. Yes, AI can write you a script, but it can only write neutral. You know what I mean? It can only write something that just is normal, that it's. That we've all seen a million times before. And if you have a huge ad budget, like a paid media budget, if you got $10 million of paid ads you can spend, yes, sure, have ChatGPT write it for you or whatever. Gemini. Um, but, uh, if that's not you, if you have to punch above your weight class in terms of, you know, delivering creative, that is Outside, um, that will help win you an outsized share of voice. Uh, yeah. A.I. is totally not the way to go because A.I. doesn't take any creative risks. It has no ability to also just understand humans and like really get into like, I can't even describe it, it just can't write like a human can. So I see that as a big advantage for you is let other brands write their scripts, let them save money on creative and let them all be pennywise pound foolish. So that's trend number one. Brands are starting to write scripts with AI and I've seen brands all over. Then take those scripts and put them into seed dance or whatever, the AI things and just totally make completely normal innocuous ads that don't get seen by anyone. And again, if that's the goal of marketing is to be under the radar and not be seen, then great, you know, that's great. But that's not the goal of marketing. The goal of marketing is to stand out. So use this AI proliferation to your advantage. Okay, so that's uh, trend number one. Trend number two that I'm seeing all over is the Apple product launch video where like they pre record people standing in a coffee shop or wherever and, and now to talk about this, here's Lisa. And then they, you know, do this long transition to Lisa and she's like, thanks Greg. Our processors are um, blah, blah, blah. Now I see a launch video for every company under the sun. Every B2B brand is now releasing all their AI agents or their AI tools or whatever their product is as an Apple launch video. And again, I feel like this has been, this has been the way since I started my career in 2010, uh, is that everyone copies Apple and typically when everyone copies Apple, I mean it's, it's because Apple is awesome. I mean you can't take it away from them that Apple's marketing. It is still my life goal to work with Apple. Um, one of my life goals you cannot take away. They are the best and that's why everyone copies them. Right? But the same thing, it's like, you know, and this is if you've listened to this podcast, you tell us a million times, but it's when everyone's doing one thing, that's your opportunity to do something else and win by default. So there's a ton of pressure now to make these Apple esque launch videos. And I've seen brands have spit fun spins on them, they're funny and, and all that stuff, but it's still the fundamental same thing is Everyone puts on their best outfit. You know, they put on those shoes with the white soles that look like casual but still dressy. And everyone has their perfect, like, like, like they hang out inside with a jacket on and you know what I mean? And everyone looks perfect and thanks, Greg. Here at Blah blah blah, we're all about blah blah blah. Um, so now that those things are reaching, you know, um, ubiquity, this is your opportunity to do something else. And what is that something else? I don't know. Um, but it's just don't do what everyone else does and then you can stand, stand out by default and then win by default. Okay, uh, trend number three, organic 9 by 16 I E. Vertical video to me is now mandatory. And we don't make it at umalt. Um, you know, I'm the worst person to make those, you know, duolingo style, um, social media videos. I think that's a position now that I'm seeing companies hire full time in house to make duolingo style, you know, vertical videos either on LinkedIn's platform, TikTok, Instagram, all of the above. I think it's now mandatory that you have someone in your company that's doing that every day, multiple times a day. And I think that's a huge driver of traffic and attention. And, and I, yeah, I just see that as a huge trend. And this isn't me, uh, saying, you know, not to do it or, you know, like, make high, uh, production value ads instead. I think, you know, um, I think it should be a mandatory element of your marketing along with high production value ads from Umalt. Uh, all right, so that's trend number three, organic 9 by 16 vertical video is now mandatory. And then number four is. This is huge. I mean, Umalt started in 2019 and this podcast was launched. It's called Death to the corporate video. Because B2B video. If you thought of the word B2B video in your brain, that led to you thinking of a corporate video of like interviews with sweaty CEOs, people walking down hallways, all that stuff. Okay, well, I'd like to take full accountability. I, uh, think this podcast changed everything because I see B2B creativity is now approaching. Like if we look at the bell curve, you know, on the left side of a bell curve is the early adopters, then you've got the middle of the bell curve. That's ubiquity. That's where everyone hops on board. And then to the right of the bell curve is the laggards. I see B2B crave B B2B creativity approaching the middle um, of the bell curve. I think we're almost at maturity and, and it's like, and I think all brands now are starting to see other brands do it right and now hopping on board and um, so I think you don't want your brand to be a laggard. I think you want to be on the left side of the bell curve, um, because that's how you can, you know, steal, share a voice. Um, but I just see creativity now. Like I used to have to fight clients or I used to have to, you know what I mean, Just kind of, um, be more rebellious with uh, I would always have someone in the company and it still way actually to a certain extent. But typically, you know, we'll always have a client that works in the company that's fighting, you know, all their red tape and their propensity to do the normal thing. Um, I find that now clients come in saying, no, no, we know, you know, we don't want to be boring and we, we don't want, we don't want normal. We want creative. Which is huge. That's amazing. We got what we want. Now the unfortunate side of that is, yeah, six years ago, uh, uh, a lot of my clients would win by default just by being creative in a sea of corporate video. Well now it's not as easy to win by default because now everyone is embracing creativity and funniness or emotion and all that stuff. So now it gets harder to stand out. Um, which is a challenge I'm up for. But yeah, it's approaching maturity. So uh, yeah, it's cool but then also scary. So that was it. The 4B 2B video ad trends for 2026 brands are starting to write scripts with AI. I think you can use this to your advantage, uh, in terms of don't do that. Let them all write normal stuff. You write the stuff that sticks out. Um, everyone has a product launch video like Apple again, how can you differentiate? I think organic vertical video is now mandatory and it should reside in house or some kind of regular freelancer that's on a contract or something like that. Like that is doing this on the regular, like how Gary Vaynerchuk said. I think he said like this 10 years ago. He said every company is going to be a media company. I think that's exactly True. And organic 9 by 16 vertical video is the way to go. And then number four, creativity is approaching maturity. So positive sign, yay. We get to be creative, not boring. Negative, uh, sign side of that is, uh. Man, now everyone else is doing this. So now how are we going to stick out? We can't just, you know, not going to win by default anymore. So that was it. Um, let me know if you have any comments, questions, concerns, and I'll see you on the next one. Thanks.