Future of Marketing briefing: The agent era on training wheels

"A clear theme at last week's Digiday Publishing Summit Europe was skepticism about agents. Executives see the upside but fully autonomous systems still feel distant. For now, many say they're relying on more human judgement in their organizations, not less. It was a useful check on where things actually stand. The industry may be calling this its "agent era" but it's still on training wheels."

"Think of the Slack bot that watches a campaign channel and turns discussion into Asana tasks; the Notion agent that assembles a clean recap deck after a client call; the reporting bot that posts daily performance summaries and flags campaigns slipping below benchmark; the lead-routing agent that enriches a form fill and delivers it to sales with context or creative platforms that generate dozens of ad variations and slot them into a preset launch flow."

"Kochava has been watching this dynamic closely. The ad measurement company's new product StationOne isn't pitched as a leap into autonomous marketing so much as a détente: an app that lets teams plug their data tools, ad platforms and LLMS into one interface. So instead of every employee prompting differently, StationOne standardizes the prompts, connects to systems like Slack, Salesforce or Kochava via MCP, and turns those interactions into repeatable workflows."

Executives exhibit skepticism about fully autonomous agents despite recognizing clear productivity benefits. Current agent deployments automate task-specific work around core activities, such as converting channel discussions to tasks, assembling recap decks, routing leads with enrichment, reporting performance, and generating ad variations. Those agents execute instructions rather than make strategic choices. StationOne consolidates data tools, ad platforms and LLMS to standardize prompts, connect systems like Slack and Salesforce, and convert interactions into repeatable workflows. The prevailing phase emphasizes acceleration and smoother hand-offs, preserving human judgment in planning, creative direction and negotiation while testing what to delegate next.

Read at Digiday