--- title: "OMR 2026 Review: Impressive, Loud, Valuable — and Sometimes a Bit Too Much" description: "OMR 2026 was impressive, loud, crowded, expensive — and still genuinely valuable. In this personal review, I look back at my experience." url: https://johannesbecht.com/blog/omr-2026-review date: 2026-05-08 modified: 2026-05-08 author: "Johannes Becht" image: https://johannesbecht.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/OMR-2026-scaled.jpg categories: ["Marketing", "AI"] type: post lang: en --- # OMR 2026 Review: Impressive, Loud, Valuable — and Sometimes a Bit Too Much OMR 2026 was impressive. There is no other honest way to start this review. Walking into the Hamburg Messe and seeing the size of the event, the number of people, the booths, the stages and the constant movement everywhere, it immediately felt like one of those events where the digital industry tries to show itself at full volume. Everything is big, branded, loud and designed to make you feel like this is where the industry is happening right now. And to be fair: in many ways, it probably is. But the same thing that makes OMR impressive also makes it exhausting. The scale is part of the value, but it is also part of the problem. If thousands of people, exhibitors, brands, agencies, tools, speakers and side events are compressed into a few days, the result is not just inspiration. It is also noise. ## First Impression: Big, Busy and Honestly Overwhelming My first impression was genuinely positive. At the beginning, OMR feels exciting. You arrive, look around and immediately understand why so many people talk about this event. There is energy everywhere. The halls are full, the booths are professionally built, the stages are packed and the entire event feels like a physical version of the digital marketing world: fast, colorful, competitive and constantly trying to grab your attention. But after a while, that excitement becomes harder to separate from overstimulation. One moment captured this perfectly for me. I was trying to move between Hall B5 and Hall B7, and for about 15 minutes, I simply could not get through. People were standing everywhere, the flow was blocked, and the area felt completely stuck. Nobody was doing anything terrible — people were just talking, waiting, checking their phones or trying to figure out where to go next. But when that many people do that in the same corridor, movement becomes almost impossible. That was the moment where the event felt almost too big for its own infrastructure. It did not ruin the experience, but it showed the downside of scale very clearly. OMR is impressive because it attracts so many people. But once you are actually inside that crowd, the size can quickly shift from “wow” to “please let me get through this hallway.” ## WEVENTURE at OMR: A Real Business Success From a business perspective, OMR 2026 was a clear success for WEVENTURE Performance GmbH. We were present in the Young Innovators area in Hall B6, Booth E07, and the booth generated exactly the kind of attention that makes an event like this worthwhile. We met many potential clients, had relevant conversations, scheduled follow-up meetings and already started potential analyses. That is the part of OMR that is easy to underestimate from the outside. If you only look at the event as a visitor, you might judge it mainly by the speakers, masterclasses, food prices or how crowded everything is. But if you are there as an exhibitor, the value is different. Then the question becomes: Are the right people stopping by? Are conversations turning into real opportunities? Is the event creating business momentum? For us, the answer was yes. What made it even more interesting was that our visibility did not only happen physically at the booth. Before OMR, we had published a blog article about the event and mentioned WEVENTURE in that context. The consequence: Tools like Copilot and AI Mode recommended us as an exhibitor. But then it became even more concrete. On Wednesday morning, a woman came to our booth after preparing for OMR with Perplexity. WEVENTURE had been recommended to her, and that recommendation helped bring her to us. We ended up scheduling a meeting. A couple more people followed on that day, also after being encouraged by AI systems to visit our booth. That was one of the most valuable moments of the whole event for me, because it showed something that is often discussed in theory: AI visibility can create real-world business outcomes. It is one thing to talk about AI search, LLM visibility, entity optimization and brand presence in generative answers. It is another thing when someone actually walks up to your booth because an AI tool included you in their event preparation. For a digital marketing agency, that is a very strong signal. It shows that visibility is no longer only about ranking in Google’s classic search results. It is increasingly also about being understood, categorized and recommended by AI systems. ## Masterclasses: Useful, But Sometimes Hidden Sales Pitches I attended masterclasses about AI search and AI automation, and my honest impression is mixed. Some parts were definitely useful. There were practical examples, interesting workflows and a few ideas I will probably think about again. It is always helpful to see how other people structure problems, build automation processes or explain changes in search behavior. But at the same time, several masterclasses felt like hidden sales presentations. That does not mean they were completely useless. But the framing matters. When you attend a masterclass, you expect education, insight and practical value. You want to leave with something you can apply independently. But in some cases, the structure was basically: “Here is how to solve this problem — using our tool.” Of course, that is understandable from a company perspective. They are at OMR to generate attention, leads and customers. But from a participant perspective, it can be frustrating when a session promises strategic insight and then slowly turns into a product demo. The tricky thing is that these sessions are often well packaged. They do show something. They do provide examples. They do offer a kind of learning experience. But the core message often remains tied to the company’s own product ecosystem. That is where the substance starts to feel thinner than expected. ## Nick Turley Was Interesting — But Not Groundbreaking I also saw Nick Turley as a speaker. The session was interesting and entertaining, especially because ChatGPT and AI assistants are obviously becoming more important for work, search and digital discovery. He was engaging, and it was valuable to hear directly from someone connected to one of the most relevant products in the AI space. But if I am completely honest, I would not say I walked away with a completely new perspective. That is not necessarily his fault. At this point, the AI conversation has moved so fast that many people in digital marketing already follow these developments closely. If you work with AI tools, SEO, content strategy and search behavior every day, a lot of high-level AI discussions feel more like confirmation than revelation. That was my general feeling with several OMR sessions: interesting, but not always transformative. Sometimes I caught myself thinking: “This is useful, but could I have gotten a similar result from a focused ChatGPT brainstorming session?” And in some cases, the answer was probably yes. That might sound overly critical, but I think it is an important point. Events like OMR promise access to cutting-edge ideas. Sometimes they deliver that. But sometimes they mostly package familiar ideas in a more impressive environment. ## Hype vs. Substance: The Main Tension of OMR For me, the biggest tension at OMR was hype versus substance. There is no question that OMR is full of energy. It brings together an incredible number of relevant people, companies and topics. You can feel what the industry is talking about. You can see which buzzwords are dominating. You can observe how brands are positioning themselves and which themes are being pushed heavily. But not everything that feels important in that environment is actually deep. AI was everywhere. Automation was everywhere. Search transformation was everywhere. Agentic commerce, generative AI, content workflows, data platforms, performance marketing, brand building — all of it was present. But the more often a topic appears on booths, panels and slides, the harder it becomes to separate genuine innovation from marketing language. That does not mean the hype is worthless. Hype also tells you something. It shows where attention is going. It shows what companies want to be associated with. It shows what clients are asking about. In that sense, OMR is useful even when it is superficial, because superficiality at scale is also a signal. But if you go there expecting every session to provide deep strategic insight, you might be disappointed. The most useful moments often happen elsewhere: in unexpected conversations, in small observations, in seeing which questions people ask at the booth, or in noticing how the industry talks about itself when everyone is trying to sell something at the same time. ## Organization: Mostly Good, But the Crowds Were a Problem Considering the size of OMR, the event was mostly well organized. An event with tens of thousands of visitors will never feel perfectly smooth. There will always be queues, blocked areas, crowded spaces and moments where you wonder why everyone seems to be walking in the opposite direction at the same time. Still, most of the event worked. The halls were structured, the program was broad, and the overall experience did not feel chaotic in a completely uncontrolled way. But the crowd management between Hall B5 and Hall B7 was definitely a problem during the moment I experienced. Being stuck for around 15 minutes because people are standing everywhere is not ideal. It makes the event feel less accessible and more stressful than it needs to be. Again, I understand why this happens. People stop to talk. Groups gather. Everyone is trying to navigate, check the app or find the next session. But at that scale, small behavior becomes a big logistical issue. ## Food, Wristbands and the Feeling of Spending Too Much The food situation was one of the weaker parts of the experience. In general, the food was expensive and not particularly filling. At some point, it starts to feel less like event catering and more like a test of how much people are willing to pay because they are already inside and do not have many convenient alternatives. One specific situation made this even more annoying: at a food stand, I was charged for a cookie that I had not ordered and had not received. To be fair, the support team later removed it from the final invoice, so the issue was solved. But it still added to the feeling that you need to pay close attention. High deposits (typically 5 euros) for plastic silverware are another issue, because it’s not being made obvious with signs or similar. The wristband payment system is convenient, but it also makes spending feel less immediate. You tap your wristband, move on, and only later receive the invoice. That is smart from an event operations perspective, but as a visitor, it can make it easier to lose track of costs. Next time, I would handle food very differently. Either I would plan ahead better, eat outside the venue when possible or bring something with me. Because honestly, paying a lot for food that does not even really fill you up is not something I would want to repeat. ## Would I Go Again? Yes — if it is paid for. In my case, attending OMR through WEVENTURE made sense, and the business value was clearly there. But the total cost still matters. Even when the event itself is covered by work, hotel and food can quickly become expensive. That changes the calculation. If I had to pay everything myself, I would think much more carefully about the expected return. OMR can be valuable, but it is not automatically valuable just because it is big. You need a strategy. If I go again in 2027, I would prepare differently. I would try to identify relevant people in advance, set up more meetings before the event and be more intentional about which sessions are actually worth attending. I would also spend less time trying to absorb everything. That is impossible anyway. OMR is too big to experience completely. The better approach is probably to define your own goal: Are you there for clients? For partnerships? For trend research? For content? For employer branding? For personal branding? For journalism contacts? Without that clarity, OMR can easily become a very expensive walk through noise. ## Final Thoughts: OMR Is Valuable If You Know How to Filter the Noise OMR 2026 was impressive, loud, expensive, sometimes overhyped — and still genuinely useful. That is the most honest summary I can give. For WEVENTURE, it was clearly a success. We met potential clients, created new business opportunities and even saw a real example of AI-driven discovery bringing someone to our booth. That alone made the event worthwhile. For me personally, the event was valuable too, but not because every session was brilliant or every speaker delivered something groundbreaking. The value was more subtle. It came from seeing the industry in motion, observing what people talk about, understanding where attention is shifting and realizing how important AI visibility is becoming in practice. OMR is not the place where every sentence changes your career. But it is one of the few places where you can feel where the digital marketing industry is moving — if you manage to filter out the noise. And there is a lot of noise. But somewhere inside that noise, there is also real value.