Kepler, Samsung Ads & Kraft Heinz Win Digiday 2026 Awards as KHC Trades at $34.50
Key Takeaways
- The 2026 Digiday Media Buying and Planning Awards honored Kepler, Samsung Ads, and Kraft Heinz, spotlighting AI-driven growth platforms and interactive CTV campaigns.
- Kepler’s consultancy pivot and Samsung’s GameBreaks format with Domino’s signaled where media buying is headed, while Kraft Heinz (KHC, $34.50) represented brand-side data excellence.
Mentioned
Key Intelligence
Key Facts
- 1Kepler won Most Innovative Media Agency by evolving into an intelligence-led growth consultancy powered by its Kip platform, which unifies audience data, media buying, creative, and measurement.
- 2Kepler launched Kip AIR, a tool that helps brands track and optimize their visibility in generative AI outputs from ChatGPT, Gemini, and similar models.
- 3Samsung Ads and Havas partnered with Domino’s to execute the first European interactive CTV campaign using GameBreaks, an ad format that turned commercial breaks into trivia games on Samsung TV Plus.
- 4Kraft Heinz was among the winners, recognized for brand-side excellence in data-driven media planning, though its specific campaign details were not disclosed in the awards release.
- 5The awards highlighted an industry shift toward AI-driven, real-time campaign adaptation and omnichannel coordination, moving beyond traditional siloed media buying.
- 6Kepler’s deepened partnerships with Amazon and Google illustrate how agencies are aligning with major platforms while retaining differentiated intelligence layers.
Who's Affected
Analysis
For marketing and adtech leaders, the 2026 Digiday awards are more than a trophy ceremony — they are a roadmap. This year’s winners demonstrate that AI-powered intelligence layers and interactive CTV are no longer optional experiments but the new standard for campaign effectiveness. With Kraft Heinz also earning recognition and its stock hovering around $34.50, the intersection of martech investment and brand performance is under serious market scrutiny.
The 2026 Digiday Media Buying and Planning Awards crystallized a pivotal shift in the advertising industry, where artificial intelligence, interactive connected TV (CTV) formats, and omnichannel intelligence are no longer experimental but central to award-winning media strategy. The awards, covering categories that span agencies, brands, and technology providers, revealed a clear departure from traditional, siloed media buying toward platforms that unify data, creative, measurement, and real-time optimization. Among this year’s standouts, Kepler won Most Innovative Media Agency, Samsung Ads debuted an interactive CTV breakthrough, and Kraft Heinz earned recognition for brand-side data-driven planning—collectively illustrating how the modern media ecosystem is being reengineered.
With Kraft Heinz also earning recognition and its stock hovering around $34.50, the intersection of martech investment and brand performance is under serious market scrutiny.
Kepler’s story is emblematic of a broader agency transformation sweeping the sector. Throughout 2025, the firm repositioned itself from a pure media agency to an intelligence-led growth consultancy, anchored by its proprietary platform, Kip. The platform integrates audience data, media buying, creative production, and performance measurement into a single AI-augmented system, essentially collapsing the traditional agency workflow into a data loop. Significantly, Kepler launched Kip AIR — a tool designed to monitor and optimize brand visibility within generative AI environments like ChatGPT and Gemini. As consumers increasingly rely on AI chatbots for product discovery, Kip AIR gives marketers a way to ensure their brands appear in these AI-generated answers, addressing a rapidly emerging challenge. Kepler also deepened its partnerships with Amazon and Google, signaling that the path to scale runs through the walled gardens of major platforms, but only when agencies bring differentiated, AI-driven value. The combination helped the agency win new business across sectors while maintaining strong client retention, a dual indicator that the consultancy model resonates financially.
On the execution side, Samsung Ads and media agency Havas partnered with Domino’s to deliver what they described as the first European campaign using GameBreaks, an interactive CTV advertising format. Running on Samsung TV Plus, the campaign turned traditional ad breaks into pizza-themed trivia, engaging viewers through their TV remotes before serving a promotional message for Domino’s Ultimate Gunpowder Chicken pizza. This experiment tested a fundamental hypothesis: that interactive television can transform passive ad exposure into active participation, thereby boosting engagement and brand recall beyond the benchmarks of standard CTV. While detailed performance metrics were not disclosed, the award recognition suggests the format delivered measurable uplifts and points to a future where ad breaks are designed as entertainment, not interruption. For marketers, this signals a new canvas for brand storytelling—one that merges gaming mechanics with television’s reach.
What to Watch
Kraft Heinz’s inclusion, though details of its specific campaign were not provided in the awards summary, underlines that legacy CPG brands are investing heavily in data-driven, omnichannel media planning. The company’s stock (KHC) has become a reference point for investors gauging the payoff of martech investments in the consumer staples sector. The award likely recognized an initiative that leveraged first-party data, consumer intelligence, and cross-platform measurement to drive media efficiency—exactly the capabilities that Digiday celebrates. This brand-side recognition confirms that the paradigm of intelligence-led media buying is not limited to agency innovation; it is being embedded within marketing organizations themselves.
Taken together, the 2026 awards reflect a media ecosystem in which AI acts as the connective tissue between strategy, execution, and measurement. The industry is moving beyond simple programmatic automation toward systems that proactively identify high-value audiences, adapt creative in real time, and even manage brand presence in generative AI interfaces. Interactive CTV adds a new layer of engagement data, potentially bridging the gap between awareness and conversion measurement. For marketers and media planners, the winners provide a blueprint: build or buy AI-powered platforms that integrate functions, experiment with interactive and omnichannel formats, and pursue deep platform partnerships. As these capabilities become table stakes, future award cycles will likely reward not just adoption but measurable business impact across the funnel.
Sources
Sources
Based on 2 source articlesHow we covered this story
Every story in our marketing coverage is assembled from multiple primary sources, cross-referenced for factual consistency, and scored along three independent dimensions: sentiment, operational impact, and source-cluster confidence. Single-source rumors and unverifiable claims do not pass our editorial gate. When a story shows "Verified by N sources" with N≥2, the development is independently corroborated; when N=1, we mark it explicitly so readers can weigh the signal accordingly.
Impact scoring uses a 1-10 scale weighted toward regulatory, financial, and operational consequence rather than coverage volume. A topic that runs in every outlet but moves no real decisions ranks lower than a niche regulatory filing that reshapes how operators in the marketing space have to behave. Read our full methodology for the scoring rubric, our glossary for term definitions, and our trends index for the longitudinal view across the beat.
| Signal on this page | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Verified by N sources | Independent corroboration count. N≥2 is our confidence floor; N=1 is marked explicitly. |
| Impact score (1-10) | Regulatory + financial + operational weight. 8+ signals an experienced-operator action item. |
| Sentiment | Five-tier classification trained on labeled marketing-specific corpora. |
| Timeline | Where applicable, the related-events sequence that contextualizes today's development. |