GAIN x Performance Marketing World: Unlocked

What happens when brand, performance and AI converge — and why structure is the real conversation.

Carlotta Costanzo, Director of Performance Creative at GAIN.

In early March 2026, our Director of Performance Creative Carlotta Costanzo took to the stage at Performance Marketing World Unlocked — mediating a session on how data and AI are reshaping creative. Here's what came out of that conversation.

Data and AI are reshaping creative, performance marketing’s biggest success lever, rapidly and at scale. But how humans operate within this ecosystem and what organisational and team structures are built is what gives a brand true competitive edge. 

AI is embedded in almost every aspect of performance marketing while creative automation is faster, testing frameworks are more sophisticated and access to tools is no longer a barrier to entry, yes.

Yet when every brand is working with similar platforms and technologies, differentiation becomes harder to define. Meanwhile, advantage comes not just from using AI but from how intelligently it is applied across anything and everything from creative development, testing and optimisation to commercial decision-making. 

Such was the conclusion that came out of a recent session I mediated at Performance Marketing World Unlocked 2026 in early March. Also participating were Kate McCutchen, Senior Director International Marketing at Life 360; Tzahi Shruber, Head of Digital Marketing at Zopa Bank; and Michael Edelmann, Chief Marketing Officer at 111SKIN. 

And the discussion we had that culminated with this conclusion was fascinating. 

We began by addressing the role of creative. And it was fascinating to hear not only how widely creative is seen as critical to both performance and growth but, also, how fast the boundary is blurring that once divided brand and performance marketing.

“Creative is critical to our performance and growth,” Kate McCutchen said.

“One of the things that we strongly believe is that all marketing is performance marketing. Whether it’s brand or performance or conversion, we believe everything is about driving growth and that creative is critical to that and everything we do is focused on trying to drive cut through at every stage of the funnel.”

“Creative at the moment is the biggest growth lever for performance marketing,” Tzahi Shruber added. “We all have the same access to the same platforms, the same channels and use the same algorithm. The only difference is what we are saying, how we say it and how fast we can leverage everything.”

The need to unite brand and performance is pressing, all agreed, and associated challenges are being tackled in a variety of ways.

“We’ve established task forces where brand and performance teams work really closely together to share their distinct points of view and work collaboratively to achieve one outcome,” Michael Edelmann explained, likening this to a global approach to a new market with brand identity and global guidelines balanced by flexibility to respect local customs and cultures.

“When it comes to performance creative, I want the teams to adhere to our brand image. We have a KPI and a goal of elevating the brand, but there also needs to be enough flexibility to adjust along the way to respect the different platforms that we are putting the creative on and to target different customer segments,’ he added. 

Kate McCutchen agreed. 

“We organise around integrative marketing,” she explained. “So, we don't have brand and performance. Instead, we look at a geographic level with an integrated marketing team that owns the full funnel – everything from awareness through to consideration to conversion to retention – so that they have all of the levers to grow the business within their control.”

The aim? “To create cohesive journeys wherever you come in from. Whether the first time you find us is through search, by chance, or because you see a TV ad or anything in between, you should really feel like you're finding the brand and can understand where you're going through that,” she said.

Data-informed but not necessarily data-driven was a recurring theme. The need to constantly test while still allowing room for risk-taking was another. And the importance of improving communication and collaboration across teams came up repeatedly,  something AI can support operationally, but not solve on its own.

What became clear to me, beyond the individual examples, is that we are still holding onto a structure that no longer reflects how marketing actually works.

The term “performance marketing” itself has created a split that was never really there — performance on one side, brand and creative on the other. Different teams, different briefs, often measured in isolation, yet ultimately responsible for the same outcome.

A performance lens does not belong to the bottom of the funnel. It belongs everywhere.

Which makes structure the real conversation.

Across the sessions at Performance Marketing World Unlocked, two models came up repeatedly: specialist pods that break silos without losing depth, and cross-functional taskforces built around a shared objective rather than a function.

The companies getting this right are not waiting for a full reorganisation. They are creating that overlap deliberately  because in a landscape where tools are increasingly standardised, how teams think, collaborate and make decisions is what defines the edge.