4 B2B video ad trends for 2026

We just wrapped our feature film Ana the Cleaner, and now I’m fully back in the B2B video ad world. Stepping away for a bit actually helped. It gave me a clearer view of what’s happening right now, and I keep seeing a few trends over and over again.

The first is that brands are starting to write scripts with AI. It was rare for a client to come to us with a script. Now it’s almost every conversation.

Do I have proof it’s AI? No. But it doesn’t take a detective to figure it out. And look, I’m not anti-AI - I use it too. But it writes normal. If your goal is to make something safe, neutral, and completely forgettable, it’s great.

But if you’re trying to stand out, it’s a problem. AI doesn’t take risks. It doesn’t really understand people. It just averages everything out. So if your competitors are leaning on it, that’s your opportunity to go the other way and actually make something worth watching.

The second trend is the explosion of Apple-style product launch videos. You’ve seen them - perfectly lit offices, polished people throwing the camera to each other, talking about their “revolutionary platform.”

A ton of B2B companies are doing it now, especially with AI products. And I get it. Apple is the gold standard. Of course, people copy it. But when everyone copies the same format, it loses its impact. It just becomes another version of a corporate video. Everything looks perfect, sounds perfect - and gets ignored. When something hits that level of ubiquity, that’s your signal to do something different.

The third trend is that vertical video is no longer optional. It’s mandatory. Every company is becoming a media company, whether they like it or not, and 9:16 content is what drives attention right now.

I’m seeing brands hire full-time creators to produce daily content for LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram. Multiple posts a day. That’s the expectation now. This doesn’t replace high-production ads - it complements them.

You need the consistency and volume of vertical content, and you need the punch of something bigger and more crafted. It’s not either/or anymore.

The fourth trend is that creativity in B2B has gone mainstream. When I started, B2B video basically meant corporate video - interviews, office shots, people walking down hallways. Now, clients come to us saying they don’t want to be boring. They want to be creative. That’s a huge shift, and honestly, it’s what we’ve all been pushing for.

But there’s a downside. It used to be easy to win by default just by being different. Now everyone is trying to be different. So the bar has been raised, and it’s harder to stand out.

The big takeaway is that trends only work until everyone starts doing them. Once that happens, they stop being effective. AI scripts, Apple-style videos, even “being creative” - they all follow that same pattern.

So the real opportunity isn’t in following trends. It’s in recognizing when they’ve become predictable, and then having the guts to go the other direction. That’s where the advantage is now.

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