In the week leading up to NAB Show 2026, Radio Ink is bringing back our special series of pre-conference conversations with some of radio’s biggest innovators.
The shift that vCreative CEO Mary DelGrande is watching heading into NAB 2026 isn’t just about AI; it’s about which vendors are actually building it into their workflows and which ones are still putting on a demo.
Radio Ink: What is a topic on the NAB agenda this year that you’re personally excited about? Why?
Mary DelGrande: Agentic AI. Not AI as a feature you bolt onto a workflow, but AI that actually runs parts of the workflow autonomously. The conversation has matured significantly in the past 12 months, and what I’m most excited about at NAB this year is moving past the demo theater phase and into real conversations about where these systems create durable value in media operations, and where they introduce risk. For us, this isn’t abstract. We’ve laid out the plan and are actively building toward AI-enabled workflows across vProMedia, vPPO, vPromotions, PromoSuite Next, and our broader product suite.
The standard we hold ourselves to is simple: intelligent automation has to remove friction at the task level, not add a new layer on top of it. Honestly, I’m just excited to see where the industry is on this. NAB has a way of showing you pretty quickly who’s building and who’s still talking about building.
Radio Ink: Broadcasters are under constant pressure to do more with fewer resources. What’s the conversation you’re hearing most from operators heading into NAB 2026 that you weren’t hearing two years ago?
DelGrande: Two years ago, the conversation was purely about efficiency: how do we do the same work with fewer resources? Today it carries a new urgency: “How can AI help us do more with what we have?” Because the reality is, it’s not a staffing gap anymore, it’s a structural reset. Layoffs, budget freezes, consolidations – the radio advertising market contraction is real, and the teams that remain are being asked to absorb responsibilities that used to belong to multiple people. What’s shifted is the openness to change.
Operators who used to say “what we’re doing works fine” are now calling us first. The willingness to evaluate and overhaul workflow infrastructure has never been higher. The challenge is that the same budget pressure driving that urgency also makes every purchase decision harder to approve. So the bar we have to clear, and the bar every vendor at NAB should be held to, is fast, demonstrable value. Fast time-to-value isn’t a nice-to-have right now; it’s the price of admission.
Radio Ink: vCreative has completed several major integrations and forged outside partnerships over the past year. Getting ready to walk the NAB floor this year, are you feeling a greater spirit of collaboration in the industry?
DelGrande: Yes, but with an asterisk. The recent integrations we’ve built with partners like WO Aurora, ZettaCloud, radio.cloud, Marketron, and others that are in progress, aren’t just technical exercises. They were a reflection of something changing in how vendors in this space think. What’s happening now is that the operators we serve don’t have time for siloed tools that don’t talk to each other. They need platforms that connect.
The asterisk is this: collaboration in the industry is still largely reactive. Most partnerships happen because a customer demands it, not because two vendors proactively sat down and said, “how do we make this better together?” I’d like to see that change, and I think NAB is one of the few places where those conversations can actually start.
Radio Ink: To be in your space, you have to be thoughtful about which AI solutions are worth building versus which ones are hype. AI will be everywhere at NAB this year; how do you set or hone your filter when it comes to finding the next legitimate development in the space?
DelGrande: My filter starts with a very simple question: does this mean fewer clicks for our end-user? A lot of what gets demoed as AI innovation is really just a new UI around an existing process; it surfaces information differently, but it doesn’t actually reduce what someone has to do. That’s not AI value; that’s cosmetic.
As we define where AI belongs in each of our products, the standard I hold our own team to is this: if we’re adding an AI feature, we should be able to point to a specific task that someone on the sales team, production team, or promotions team does today that will take materially less time, or stop happening manually altogether. If we can’t draw that line, we won’t build it.
We formalized this across our product portfolio through a structured AI capabilities roadmap, which will guide us moving forward. Every recommendation has a business rationale, a target user, measurable KPIs, and an implementation sequence. That discipline protects us from chasing what’s interesting and keeps us focused on what’s useful. Overall, with regard to AI in our products, if the answer is vague, the value probably is too.
Radio Ink: There’s Cocktails and Conversation, which you’re returning to this year, but after all the meetings and sessions and floor time, what’s the one thing you always make sure to do at NAB?
DelGrande: LISTEN. I’m fortunate to have my Executive Team with me again this year, as well as one of our Sr. Engineers and an Account Executive, so you can rest assured, vCreative will hear you. For me, it’s about taking time to connect with our current, and future, clients and having a real conversation. NAB is one of the only times in the year when so many people who entrust their business to us and use our products every day are all in the same place. It’s also a time when future clients are looking for solutions.
Truthfully, the most valuable information we bring back from NAB is from a conversation where someone tells my team or me, unprompted, what’s driving them crazy right now. What keeps them up at night? What they wish existed. That’s where our best product instincts come from. That conversation is worth more than any research report. Honestly, that’s reason enough to show up every single year, and we will.
There’s something about co-sponsoring an event like Cocktails and Conversation that I genuinely love; it’s the industry at its best. No pitches, no slides, just good people who all care about the same thing, catching up before the chaos officially begins.
This year’s Cocktails and Conversation reception during NAB Show is sponsored by Beasley Media Group, Benztown, Quu, Skyview Networks, ENCO Systems, Xperi, vCreative, Radio Ink, and RBR+TVBR.
