The news: Marketers are shifting budgets toward measurable, first-party media beyond walled gardens, according to Paved’s 2026 Newsletter Ad Performance Report—which draws on millions in spend across thousands of campaigns on its platform.
CMOs are investing in newsletters that tie spend to outcomes, where engagement is climbing and publishers on Paved are earning 30% more YoY as brands tighten targeting and elevate creative.
Why it’s worth watching: As signal loss reshapes targeting and large language models (LLMs) reduce referral traffic, marketers are prioritizing channels they can measure and control.
Newsletters offer opted-in audiences, direct distribution, and clearer attribution than many social and open-web environments.
The challenge: Inbox fatigue is real. Consumers receive hundreds of emails daily, per Campaign Monitor, and incremental sends can dilute engagement, raising unsubscribe rates and lowering long-term list health, per Benchmark.
Visibility is no longer guaranteed by subscription alone. While send volume from brands and publishers is increasing, Apple Mail and Gmail are tightening filters by auto-sorting messages into tabs, and deploying AI summaries that decide what readers see first.
- Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) has already weakened open-rate reliability, per HubSpot.
- AI-generated previews compress content into a few lines, reducing scroll depth and shrinking ad exposure.
Recommendations for marketers: Inbox access is at a premium despite rising newsletter ad spend and subscriber growth.
- Marketers should optimize for filtered inboxes. Write subject lines for AI summaries, not just humans. Front-load value in the first two lines and build creative that works in preview panes, where scroll depth may never come.
- Protect audience trust by prioritizing high-affinity publishers with engaged lists over broad reach. Test send cadence to avoid over-sending.
Dive deeper: For more insights on email marketing trends, read our comprehensive Email Marketing 2026 report.
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