Grace Dent holds one of the most unique vantage points in the UK media landscape. As a Guardian restaurant critic, the beloved host of the smash-hit podcast Comfort Eating, and now the new face of a massive BBC institution as a lead judge on MasterChef, she successfully navigates both the scaled power of mainstream television and the deep, hyper-engaged promise of digital audio. In this opening keynote, we unpack her journey to discover what brands and media planners can learn from the talent’s perspective. How do you build genuine connections across wildly different platforms, and what is the secret to a successful brand-creator collaboration that actually delivers results?

The Value of Human Taste: Moving beyond algorithms to understand what actually moves people. Grace explores how leaning into raw nostalgia, vulnerability, and unapologetic joy (the core of Comfort Eating) creates a far deeper connection with an audience than polished, corporate perfection.

Taking on the Institution: A candid look at stepping into the spotlight as the new lead judge of MasterChef. What does it take to connect with a legacy, mass-market TV audience today, and how does the intense pressure of a prime-time broadcast compare to the intimacy of the podcast studio?

The Creator-Brand Partnership: An unfiltered conversation on how sponsors can best work with talent to achieve their objectives. Instead of demanding rigid talking points, how can brands collaborate with creators to integrate their messaging in a way that feels authentic, entertaining, and commercially effective?

How does a top CMO build a media plan that delivers business growth? This opening interview is an in-depth sit down with a leading brand marketer to get their how-to on what media they are actually using, and how they prove it delivers commercial success.

• How they built their 2026 media strategy to drive specific business goals (e.g., market share, new customer acquisition).
• A candid look at their media mix, how they balance brand-building and performance media to deliver both long-term and short-term growth.
• The key business metrics (not just media metrics) they use to prove the value of their media choices to the board. 

AI is rewriting the rules of brand discovery. What happens to your brand equity when a consumer just asks for "the best"? This session is a practical look at the future, exploring how brands must adapt their strategies for building trust, recognition, and reputation in an algorithmic age.

• Branding in the algorithmic age: how AI will alter brand reputation and visibility.
• What "brand building" means now: exploring the new levers for building trust when discovery is automated.
• The new competitive landscape: how emerging brands can use AI to challenge legacy players.

A global event is one of the biggest media investments a brand can make. This panel deconstructs the how-to of turning that spend into tangible business success. We'll explore the media strategies and measurement models needed to justify the investment and deliver results.

• The long-term: How to build a synonymous brand association through decades of media strategy.
• The activation: How to activate a global sponsorship across all media channels, from broadcast and digital to on-the-ground.
• Finding Your Angle: How to tailor a massive global property (like the World Cup) to your specific brand DNA to ensure you drive relevant engagement, not just generic awareness.
• Justifying the investment: The media metrics and ROI models used to prove the value of a massive cultural sponsorship.

The new map isn't just about creators; it's about how they partner with established media. This session explores how traditional media owners and new map creator-brands are moving from competition to collaboration, building integrated ad products and media strategies that brands can't build alone.

• A how-to on partnership: how are broadcasters and creators co-producing new media formats?
• The agency's new role: how to act as the strategic broker between these two worlds.
• The new media buy: what do these integrated, multi-platform ad products look like?

The shift from a broadcast-led to a networked, algorithm-driven media system is impacting audience behaviour at scale, but with the pace of change accelerating so rapidly, few marketers have stopped to step back and look at the big picture. 

This session will share the findings of brand new qualitative and quantitive research into the beliefs and behaviours of UK audiences raised on algorithmic media: where trust is shifting, how people are pushing back against passive feeds, and what this means for brands trying to build influence in fragmented environments. 

More information to follow.

A Case Study on how Formula E Built a Global Youth Culture Powerhouse.

After years of discussion, the HFSS regulations are a reality. This is a "looking back" case study, moving from theory to practice. We explore the real-world impacts on media plans, which creative "workarounds" actually paid off, and the transferable lessons for navigating future legislation.

• The real-world impact: the tangible effects of HFSS legislation on media plans and creative.
• The "workaround" report card: which alternative strategies actually paid off, and which didn't?
• Navigating the next wave: transferable lessons for preparing for future regulatory changes.

A Case Study on how Formula E Built a Global Youth Culture Powerhouse

In a fragmented landscape, attribution is the hardest part of the media planner's job. This technical session moves beyond last-click to explore the modern models for cross-media measurement.

• Beyond the Silo: How to join up data from walled gardens, open web, and offline media to get a single view of effectiveness.
• The Attribution Debate: MMM vs. MTA which model actually drives better investment decisions?
• Proving the Connection: How to attribute a specific media touchpoint to a tangible business result to prove ROI.

After years of discussion, the HFSS regulations are a reality. This is a "looking back" case study, moving from theory to practice. We explore the real-world impacts on media plans, which creative "workarounds" actually paid off, and the transferable lessons for navigating future legislation.

• The real-world impact: the tangible effects of HFSS legislation on media plans and creative.
• The "workaround" report card: which alternative strategies actually paid off, and which didn't?
• Navigating the next wave: transferable lessons for preparing for future regulatory changes.

Too much marketing investment is spent on advertising that is largely overlooked or ignored.

In an age of increasingly distracted media consumption, it’s time to reconsider the value of advertising that cuts through and connects with audiences even at low levels of attention. Research demonstrates that audio can be crucial in addressing this challenge, ensuring advertising gains attention and delivers optimum results.

Despite this evidence, and record audiences for commercial audio, advertising spend continues to favour audio-lite channels like social media. This session explores the tension between audio’s proven effectiveness and media spend trends by asking our panel of experts:

•  “Are advertisers genuinely unconcerned about remaining unheard?”
• “What’s driving this complacency?” 
• “What needs to happen to overcome the audio apathy of some advertisers, to help amplify the effects of their media spend?”

For years, media and creative diverged, but the most effective modern work puts media strategy upstream. In this fast-paced showcase, leading teams take the stage to prove it. They have limited time to deconstruct their "Campaign of the Year," revealing how the media strategy didn't just support the creative… it created it.

But who did it best? The power is in your hands. Using live polling, the audience will vote for the winner, crowning the campaign that best demonstrates the perfect marriage of data, channel, and idea.

• The Media-First Brief: Each team must reveal the "invisible" work: how audience data and channel insights informed the creative process before a single asset was made.
• The Strategist as Architect: A look at how the media planner acted as the essential bridge between the data and the Big Idea.
• The Vote: We critique the results (not just the views), and you cast your vote to decide which campaign offers the ultimate blueprint for integrated growth.

Somewhere along the way, AI became synonymous with cutting costs and cutting people. That’s a mistake.

In this session, we’re starting a different conversation. One that reframes AI as a tool for growth, not reduction. One that challenges marketers to take responsibility for the future they’re building.

Join us if you believe AI should make things better, not just cheaper.

In a volatile political era, the role of the Political Editor has never been more critical or complex. We bring together the UK’s leading political journalists to discuss how the media landscape has fundamentally shifted. From the rise of TikTok politics to the battle for trust in an AI age, this session explores the vital importance of a robust, funded press and what it means for the wider media ecosystem.

• The Changing Media Map: How political reporting has evolved from the 10 o'clock news to a multi-platform battleground of social feeds, podcasts, and live streams.
• The Trust Premium: Why high-quality journalism remains the most effective and essential context for brand media investment in a world of misinformation.
• The Algorithm vs. The Editor: How political journalism is fighting for visibility in an algorithm-driven world, and why human curation is the ultimate premium media product.