4 Key Trends from DMEXCO & Live From the Floor with Bastian Schlochtermeyer

40,000 people. 17 stages. One motto on every wall: Scaling Intelligence. Host Nadia Koski came home from DMEXCO 2026 in Cologne with a different read — everybody at that fair was scaling infrastructure, and almost nobody was scaling trust. In this recap, she walks through the four things people were actually debating on the floor, from Markus Caspari’s line that 99% of today’s AI commerce isn’t truly agentic, to the most AI-saturated year this fair has had, crowning “The Return of Experience” as its winning trend.  Then she unpacks both stages she was on. On the Innovation Stage, "Sovereign by Design, where The Marketeer Group and Kantar released The Trust Premium, new EU5 research showing women have nearly closed the usage gap on AI but sit ten points behind on confidence, and that “tested to work fairly” outsells “built in Europe.”  And at the Microsoft Advertising booth, the panel discussion "More Voices. Smarter AI", moved the question from whether women use AI to whether they are in decision-making roles and how to fix it when they're not. Then straight onto the floor. Bastian Schlochtermeyer, Co-Founder and Managing Director of SWNXT, signs his LinkedIn posts “Human Written” and runs an agency building AI and CGI content engines. Basti and Nadia get into where he draws that line, why he believes outstanding creativity stays human while mediocre work gets automated, what German clients are really asking when they ask where the servers are, and the one thing he will never hand over to an AI. **LINKS & RECS** Download the research study, "The Trust Premium," exploring consumer trust in AI across EU5 by Kantar and The Marketeer Group Check out "NEXT! with - The Pulse" interviews on the MMA DACH's Linkedin page Connect with Bastian Schlochtermeyer on LinkedIn Learn more about SWNXT *Still Human* is available wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes out every two weeks. Please follow, subscribe and leave a review if this one landed. Sound engineer: Morgan Bosc Cover art: Adam Richarson Nadia Headshot: Alessandro Fibbi