CES 2026 will be the first AI-filtered CES. If your booth doesn’t show up in AI answers, it may as well not exist. Walk into Las Vegas and the buzz will be everywhere—AI in every slogan, every booth, every pitch. But here’s the shift: reporters, analysts, and buyers aren’t just taking notes. They’re running prompts through Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. If your story isn’t structured for those systems, you don’t just lose coverage—you never even enter the conversation.
That’s why CES isn’t about louder anymore. It’s about sharper. And the difference between background noise and market signal will come down to whether your PR strategy is engineered for both humans and machines.
That’s the problem with CES now. The spectacle is bigger, the headlines louder, but the signal-to-noise ratio? Brutal. If you’re a brand trying to break through, you’re not just competing with thousands of exhibitors—you’re competing with attention spans measured in seconds and media coverage increasingly drafted by AI assistants, not humans.
And yet, this is still the most important stage you can stand on. CES is where partnerships are born, where analysts set narratives for the year ahead, and where buyers get their first impression of who’s credible—and who’s just another booth with blinking lights. That’s why the right CES PR agency or CES marketing agency isn’t just a support team—it’s the difference between being background noise and becoming a market signal. The brands that win invest in CES PR services that amplify their presence far beyond the show floor. The stakes aren’t just PR bragging rights anymore. They’re about survival in markets where one strong CES showing can rewrite your trajectory.
CES 2026 isn’t asking for louder. It’s asking for sharper.
Why CES Is Harder to Win in 2026 Than Ever Before
In the past, CES success was measured by the size of your booth and the stack of business cards you collected. If you had a big enough screen, a flashy enough demo, and a line of people snapping photos, you could call it a win. That playbook doesn’t hold up anymore.
Here’s why:
The media isn’t just walking the floor with cameras and notepads. They’re walking the floor with Gemini, Perplexity, and ChatGPT open in their pocket. Instead of scribbling quotes, they’re asking their AI assistants, “Which brands are actually innovating in this category?” If your story isn’t structured in a way those systems can surface and recommend, you don’t just miss coverage—you never even enter the conversation.
Buyers, too, are playing differently. Procurement teams aren’t picking up glossy brochures; they’re scanning QR codes, feeding product specs into internal AI systems, and checking compatibility before they even talk to your rep. If your booth story doesn’t translate into data their bots can digest, you’re invisible to the people who matter most.
And analysts become the bridge between CES hype and market reality. They don’t care how sleek your booth looks if your roadmap doesn’t align with industry shifts. This year, the questions aren’t “What’s your new feature?” but “How does your product survive in an AI-first ecosystem?”
The stakes are higher because the filters are harsher. Flash is still there, but substance is what gets carried forward after the lights go down. CES 2026 is no longer about being seen in the room. It’s about being remembered in the feed—human or machine. And that’s where a CES marketing agency structures the story for humans and algorithms alike, while a CES PR agency ensures it lands in the right headlines and analyst notes.
At Zen Media, we call this mapping your Core 1,000 Prompt Universe™—the real questions people and AI assistants ask about your category. Your CES story has to surface inside those prompts to be discovered, trusted, and cited. That’s not “extra work.” That’s the new baseline for visibility.
The 2026 Playbook: Cutting Through AI Noise With Human Storytelling
Last year hinted at it, but CES 2026 will make it unavoidable: every booth will sound the same once AI compresses your pitch into a 40-word block. Think about it. Gemini or Perplexity doesn’t care how clever your tagline is, how much you spent on a booth takeover, or how long your press release runs. What survives in their summaries is a sentence: what your product does, why it matters, and who it’s for.
That means the real game isn’t just about booth design or media dinners. It’s about engineering your story so that both humans and machines walk away with the same clear idea of why your brand exists.
Here’s where most brands trip:
- They talk features instead of outcomes. “Faster chip, bigger screen, better battery.” Great. Until ten other booths claim the same thing.
- They speak in safe generalities. “Revolutionary.” “Next-gen.” “Smartest ever.” AI systems strip these words out because they don’t mean anything. Reporters do the same.
- They forget that every audience—analyst, journalist, partner, or buyer—is asking a different question but expecting a single coherent answer.
So the playbook is this: write your narrative like it’s going to be retold by a machine, because it will. One clear outcome. One memorable differentiator. One experience no one else in your category can deliver.
And when you bring that into the booth, you don’t need the biggest screen on the floor. You just need the sharpest story in the room—because that’s what people, and now AI systems, will carry with them long after CES shuts down.
Beyond the Booth: Data, Activations, and Post-CES Momentum
The rookie mistake at CES has always been treating the booth as the finish line. You pour months of planning and half your annual budget into a few square feet of Vegas carpet—and then hope that a journalist wanders by or a buyer happens to stop. In 2026, that’s not just naïve. It’s fatal.
Because the booth is no longer the epicenter of discovery. It’s just one node in a larger system where attention gets captured, processed, and redistributed—by people, but increasingly by AI.
So what does that mean in practice? It means your activation can’t end when someone scans a badge. It has to leave a trail—structured content, quotable data points, visual proof—that can live on after CES inside coverage, newsletters, LinkedIn threads, and, most critically, inside AI engines that will scrape, summarize, and retell your story long after Vegas.
The brands that won last year didn’t just put on a show. They produced artifacts. They left behind snackable sentences, annotated visuals, and clear definitions that could travel—across TikTok posts, analyst notes, and AI summaries.
One standout example is New Cosmos, who turned their CES launch into a 689% surge in share of voice by structuring their story to live beyond the booth. It’s proof that momentum doesn’t come from spectacle—it comes from leaving behind a narrative built to keep working long after the lights shut off. For a deeper look, you can explore the full New Cosmos case study.
Today, that trail gets picked up not only by journalists but also by procurement bots and recommendation systems. If your post-CES footprint isn’t structured for discovery, your entire effort risks evaporating the moment the convention hall closes.
The smartest move? Treat CES like the starting gun, not the finish line. Plan for what happens after the lights shut off. Design your activation so it survives outside the booth—because that’s where the real buying cycle begins.
Storytelling Beyond the Booth
At CES, booths are everywhere. Rows of glowing screens, flashy banners, polished demos—and after a while, they all blur together. The brands that people talk about after Vegas aren’t the ones with the biggest booth. They’re the ones that made people feel something.
That doesn’t mean gimmicks. It means storytelling that’s alive in the room. GE Profile smoking brisket at their booth wasn’t about appliances—it was about triggering curiosity, appetite, and conversation through smell. People left that booth remembering the experience, not just the specs.
The question for 2026 is, what’s your version of that? What sensory hook, what moment of surprise, and what human story can you wrap around your tech? Because no journalist is writing a headline that says, “Company X has 20% better battery life.” They’re writing, “Company X reimagines what’s possible when you’re nowhere near an outlet.”
Think about activations less as a stage set and more as a stage play. Who’s your main character (customer)? What’s their challenge? How does your product rewrite the ending?
And don’t forget: this doesn’t always mean big budgets. Sometimes the simplest gestures cut through the noise—a prototype buyers can actually touch, a live simulation of a real-world problem solved in seconds, or even a small, theatrical moment that makes people stop scrolling on their phones.
CES 2026 is not about showing. It’s about staging. Your booth isn’t a container for your product; it’s the stage where your story is performed in front of an audience that’s already restless, overloaded, and skeptical. Get that right, and you don’t just attract people. You imprint yourself on their memory.
The Real Stage Isn’t the Exhibit Hall — It’s the Media-Only Rooms
Most first-timers at CES obsess over their booth. They fight for better placement, bigger screens, and flashier demos. That’s fine for foot traffic, but here’s the dirty secret: the journalists, analysts, and influencers who can actually move the needle? They don’t see most of those booths. They’re in ballrooms at the Venetian, the Wynn, or tucked away in media-only events like ShowStoppers, Pepcom, or CES Unveiled.
That’s where the headlines are born.
These are curated environments, almost like speed-dating between brands and the press. Instead of being drowned in the chaos of 4,000 booths, journalists walk into a room where the playing field is leveled. Your $10 million competitor might have a two-story build-out on the main floor, but in a ShowStoppers suite, you’re across the table with the same shot at telling your story.
The brands that know this don’t treat media-only events as “nice-to-have add-ons.” They build their CES strategy around them. They treat them as the launchpad, the place where they lock in coverage before anyone even walks the exhibit floor.
And here’s where timing is ruthless: if you don’t secure your spot months in advance, you’re locked out. And if you show up without a narrative that cuts through, you’re wallpaper.
What works? Precision. A story that a reporter can understand in 20 seconds flat. Something that ties your product to the larger trends everyone’s already writing about. Something that gives them a headline, not homework. This is exactly where a CES PR agency proves its worth—crafting the kind of story that sticks long after the ballroom doors close.
We’ve seen startups with a folding table at Pepcom walk away with more coverage than Fortune 100 giants—because they respected the gravity of those rooms.
So if you’re serious about CES in 2026, don’t just obsess over your booth design. Ask yourself: What’s our strategy for ShowStoppers? Who’s meeting us at Unveiled? How are we making our 10 minutes in that room unforgettable?
Because if you don’t have that answer yet, your CES playbook isn’t ready.
The Power of Embargoes: Winning Before the Show Even Starts
If you wait until CES officially kicks off to pitch your story, you’ve already lost. By the time those doors open in Las Vegas, half the biggest stories are already written—under embargo.
Here’s how it works: weeks before CES, the smartest brands lock in coverage with their target journalists. They share press kits, product demos, and data points, but with one condition—nothing gets published until 9:00 a.m. on Day One (or whenever they want the drop).
That way, while competitors are scrambling to flag down reporters on the floor, their story is already live, already trending, and already controlling the narrative.
Reporters love embargoes. It gives them time to write a thoughtful piece instead of rushing through in the chaos of the show. It makes their editors happy because they can schedule content. And it makes you look like you’ve got your act together, because you do.
The other trick? Staggering your embargoes. Maybe your hero product launches at the CES opening bell, but your partnership announcement drops on Day Two, just when the news cycle starts to get crowded. That second wave can double your visibility while everyone else fades into background noise.
And don’t forget influencers now play by the same rules. More of them are getting media passes, and more of them are shaping the conversation. If you’re not slipping them previews under embargo, your competitors will.
Embargo strategy is what separates brands that dominate headlines from brands that send out a press release nobody reads. And here’s where most brands miss the biggest lever: the wire. Every 28 days, AI engines are scraping GlobeNewswire and similar services. CES brands that combine embargo waves with a wire cadence don’t just control human headlines—they create AI retrievability that lasts long after Vegas. That’s how you win both in feeds and in prompts.
Influencers Are Your Distribution Engine
CES isn’t just about who shows up in Vegas. It’s about who carries your story out into the world. And in 2026, that job belongs less to glossy media outlets and more to the micro-influencers who live-stream from the floor.
These aren’t kids doing unboxings in their bedrooms. They’re engineers with LinkedIn followings, analysts with Substacks, and TikTok creators who can rack up 200,000 views in a day by walking through your demo. They don’t need press credentials. They don’t need a PR firm polishing the message. What they need is a reason to stop at your booth, pull out their phone, and tell your story in their own words.
The mistake most brands make is treating influencers like loudspeakers. Hand them a spec sheet, ask for a shoutout, and hope for the best. That’s not influence—that’s advertising in disguise. Real influence happens when these voices become participants in your story. Give them access. Let them test your product live. Capture their honest reactions. When they share what they see instead of what your deck says, the credibility is instant.
And credibility is the currency that multiplies. A respected engineer’s quick floor walkthrough can spark more qualified conversations than a press release in a trade journal. A LinkedIn post from a supply chain exec can reach procurement teams you’ve never met. Stitch those voices together, and suddenly your brand feels everywhere at once—across feeds, Slack channels, and yes, even AI summaries that scrape and retell their posts.
Here’s the overlooked piece: influencer posts, analyst newsletters, and even floor TikToks don’t just reach humans. They become inputs for AI models that summarize CES. That means when a respected engineer live-streams your demo, that clip isn’t just brand buzz—it’s an authority signal that AI assistants may reference for months.
Think of it this way: CES is the stage. Influencers are your road crew. They pack up your story and take it on tour, amplifying it long after Vegas. A strong CES marketing agency integrates these influencer activations into the broader campaign so your story travels across feeds, platforms, and even AI summaries.
Own the Trend or Flip It
Every January, CES selects a select few technologies as the year’s highlights. One year it was voice assistants, another it was smart homes, and last year it was AI-in-everything. In 2026, you can feel the fusion coming: AI, sustainability, and autonomy colliding into one messy, electric conversation.
Most brands will take the lazy road: slap “AI-powered” or “sustainable” on their press kits and hope it sticks. The result? A blur of sameness that bores journalists and washes out in AI summaries.
The smarter play is to decide whether you’re going to ride the wave or rewrite it.
Riding means you attach yourself to the dominant story—but with precision. Instead of “AI-enabled widget,” you frame it as “the AI that cuts 37 minutes out of every logistics manager’s morning.” Broad trend, narrow angle. Analysts and press love this because it translates hype into tangible impact.
Rewriting means zagging while everyone else zigs. Maybe you don’t add to the AI chorus—maybe you counter it. Imagine a cybersecurity vendor with a banner that says, “AI is your biggest vulnerability. Here’s how we fix it.” Suddenly, you’re not background noise. You’re the foil, the tension, the one with an edge.
The best CES campaigns don’t just echo trends—they either give them teeth or turn them inside out. Both approaches get attention. Both stick. The key is courage. Play it safe and you’ll vanish. Reframe the conversation on your terms, and you walk out of Vegas with coverage that lasts long after the booths come down.
Keeping the Buzz Alive After CES
CES is a sprint, but the real game is the marathon that follows. Too many companies treat their booth as the finish line—they pack up, fly home, and wait for the coverage to roll in. But sustaining visibility requires ongoing CES trade show PR and marketing—not just a one-week push in Vegas.
Think about the journalists who came by your booth. They scribbled notes, shot some photos, and maybe filmed a quick interview. But when they get back to New York, London, or Tokyo, they’re facing a backlog of deadlines and a flood of pitches. If you’re not following up with tailored angles, usable assets, and clear data points, your story dies in their inbox.
The same goes for buyers and partners. That quick handshake in the hall or five-minute demo on the show floor was just an opening. The companies that convert CES leads into revenue are the ones that have a post-show system. A cadence of follow-ups. A portal with ready-to-use press kits, CAD files, case studies. A campaign that drips out fresh proof points in the weeks after, so you’re not just remembered—you’re relevant.
And here’s the kicker: CES isn’t just a stage; it’s a signal. If you play it right, the coverage, the demos, the influencer mentions—all of it can be repackaged into credibility for the rest of the year. A headline in TechCrunch becomes the opening slide of your sales deck. A tweet from an analyst becomes part of your LinkedIn ads. That’s how you stretch seven days in Vegas into twelve months of authority.
That’s how you stretch seven days in Vegas into twelve months of authority. And the new metric isn’t just “coverage secured”—it’s AI citations gained. Did your CES launch get cited in ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini when buyers asked about your category? If not, your story evaporates. If yes, you’ve built a visibility system that compounds far beyond the show.
From CES Buzz to Market Momentum
CES is loud. It’s crowded. It’s overwhelming. But when you strip away the spectacle, it comes down to one thing: does anyone remember you when they get home?
That’s the real test. Not the size of your booth, not the number of badges you scanned, but whether your story survives the noise. Did you earn a headline that gets clipped into investor decks? Did your product make it into the shortlists analysts share with clients? Did the buyers you met still recognize your name two months later?
The brands that pass that test are the ones that prepare before CES, execute during CES, and double down after CES. They understand that the show isn’t about foot traffic—it’s about narrative control. If you can tell your story clearly and create experiences that make it unforgettable, and lock in follow-up systems that turn interest into action, CES becomes more than a trade show. It becomes a launchpad.
At Zen Media, we don’t just help you “show up.” We build the strategy that gets your product cited in the right coverage, in front of the right buyers, and remembered long after Vegas. From PR playbooks to experiential activations to AI-driven media targeting, we turn CES chaos into lasting market velocity.
If you want to know exactly where your CES plan breaks, contact us. We’ll map out your blind spots, benchmark you against competitors, and build the roadmap that makes your booth more than a booth.
Because CES isn’t where products are shown. It’s where brands are chosen—and in 2026, chosen means human editors and AI engines alike. If you want your CES story to show up in the right feeds and the right AI answers, let’s map your prompt universe, stress-test your embargo and wire strategy, and build the playbook that survives the Vegas noise.