Most European ad executives expect agentic buying to arrive within a year, and most still keep people steering. IAB Europe surveyed 50 executives across 44 European markets in spring and summer 2026, and 58% expect agentic ad buying to reach operational use or scale inside twelve months. Company size splits that answer. At organizations with 501 or more staff, 86% already operate their top agentic systems in a mode where humans and agents jointly plan, delegate and execute work. At 500 staff or fewer, it is 48%.
How fast agents will enter everyday trading is contested: 30% expect them to become a main way to buy and sell ads in some markets, and 28% expect regular use short of that. AI itself is nearly universal, used internally at 47 of the 50 organizations and for marketing at 43. The hesitation is about control. Of 47 respondents, 36 said their organization has no agent operating day to day, or has one that humans still direct or plan with. Security ranked as the top concern, privacy second.
So agents get the routine work. Reporting, analysis and dashboards were the most common AI-supported workflow for 22 of 29 respondents, with programmatic optimization next at 59%. Efficiency is how 68% of all respondents say their organizations judge AI, and budgets are rising: more AI spend in 2026 than in 2025, with 59% increasing investment in AI marketing technology specifically. Outside the survey, WPP and Omnicom are each testing their own buyer agents, CNN and News U.K. are developing agents for the sell side, and Georgia-Pacific wants more proof before building one.
Omnicom CFO Phil Angelastro, speaking at Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia and Technology Conference in September 2026, tied the investment case to measurement: “the more it improves the better it’s going to be for us because we’re going to be able to prove the return on investment that we deliver to clients.” Ian Maxwell, CEO of ad tech firm Converge Digital, questions the value, arguing that agentic buying automates small pieces of a large process that still needs human oversight. Even a campaign built in seconds, he said, meets the same wall: “when the creative is 4 days late, what exactly is different to right now?”
Read more at Digiday.