Inside the messy but transformational rise of agentic media buying

Many of media’s biggest players are diving in headfirst into agentic media planning and buying. Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery, WPP and Horizon all announced new tools around the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. NBCUniversal started experimenting with agentic buying at CES.

Advertising is full of buzzwords whose practical promise doesn’t meet the hype. Still, many experts The Current spoke with see agentic planning and buying as nascent but potentially transformational.

“This is the year it’s moving from whiteboard theory to activation,” said Tylynn Pettrey, senior vice president of analytics and AI at Chalice AI. Her team is already seeing lift as high as 60% on campaigns in alpha-stage testing.

But if agentic advertising scales, it could raise important questions and concerns: How might it change agency structures? Who will be accountable for errors in autonomous buying? How will the industry account for potential hallucinations?

On this episode of The Current Report, we’re breaking down how agentic AI is changing media planning and buying.

“This could be a fad that fizzles out if everybody thinks it’s an interesting new tool, but doesn’t put any effort into adopting it, or it could take off,” Pettrey said. “We’re at that tipping point now where there’s enough buzz and chatter about it. There’s enough players in the space that we could adopt it and see how it plays out, or it could fizzle out. And I think this is going to be the year where the industry decides that.”