"It can sometimes be a fine line between a promise and a threat - but that's where generative AI stands in its application to the media agency world today. At least that's the biggest takeaway from a Town Hall discussion at last week's Programmatic Marketing Summit, held in New Orleans as the last of Digiday's events for the year 2025."
"There were differing opinions over to what extent AI and agentic technologies are already part of programmatic workflows (and there seemed to be no consensus definition for what qualifies as agentic). What the agency executives did seem to agree on, though, was that AI agents are best kept away from the actual point of transaction between media buyers and sellers."
"I think we all know that machine learning AI ... from a buying standpoint is already very integrated. But I think what is new is the gen AI, right? And that's what's exciting. The agent idea, and this idea of ideation creating autonomy is where it's evolving. But I don't think we all know what we're talking about, just because it is already integrated within buying across Meta, Google, etc. But from a gen AI aspect, I think that's what's really exciting."
Generative and agentic AI occupies a space between promise and threat in programmatic advertising. Agency leaders reported confusion about what qualifies as agentic AI and admitted uneven integration across workflows. Executives broadly favored keeping autonomous agents away from the point of transaction between buyers and sellers. AI is seen as appropriate for pre-transaction planning and post-transaction performance organization. Effective use of agentic tools will require enhanced training on AI capabilities and limitations and stronger grounding in programmatic advertising fundamentals so human staff can supervise AI outputs and manage risks.
Read at Digiday
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