The case for and against agentic media buying

"“Most companies that are focused on agentic in our space are just talking about plugging into these tiny pools of inventory,” Green told analysts on the call. “One advertiser connects to one publisher, and in doing so, you more or less create another ad network, where you have hundreds of thousands of ad networks because of the combination of one advertiser to one publisher and agents talking to each other.”"

"To some, agentic media buying tools could fix some of programmatic advertising's oldest headaches - ad-tech taxes, supply-chain murkiness, even the decline of the open web's appeal and addressability. To others, it risks doing the opposite: adding another layer of opacity and pushing an already complex system into even greater chaos."

"The debate resurfaced recently after Omnicom CEO John Wren said the holdco was testing agent-to-agent media buys designed to create more direct publisher relationships and reduce what he described as the “toll” taken by ad-tech intermediaries. Stagwell and Butler/Till are among the other agencies notably pushing ahead with similar tech."

"Holding companies have been steadily consolidating supply paths, leaning harder into curated PMPs and bringing more activation in-house through their own curation and supply-path optimization layers. The open exchange is getting hurt in the process. Whether agentic media trading can reverse that remains an open question."

Agentic media buying tools are seen as a potential remedy for programmatic advertising problems such as ad-tech tolls, unclear supply chains, and reduced openness and addressability. Some holding companies and agencies are testing agent-to-agent buying to create more direct publisher relationships and reduce intermediary costs. Publishers may view this as a structural fix, but open-exchange programmatic advertising has also shown that promised benefits can fail to materialize. A key concern is that agentic buying may only work effectively at the scale of the open marketplace. If implemented through direct buyer-seller relationships, it could create many small inventory pools and effectively generate a new ad-network layer, increasing complexity and opacity. Consolidation toward curated PMPs and in-house activation continues to pressure open exchange.

Read at Digiday