Tag: agentic AI
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The promise and problem of agentic AI in advertising
AI agents were everywhere around the Super Bowl this year—so brands are doing the obvious thing: chasing attention where the attention is. The twist is that both consumers and the industry are still figuring out what “agentic” actually means in practice, even as platforms keep shipping new tools. Google’s Ashish Gupta pointed to longer, more…
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Agentic ad buying has moved from niche topic to top-tier anxiety for media planners
Agentic ad buying has officially graduated from niche curiosity to boardroom concern. In the IAB’s January 2026 Outlook Study, 40% of US ad buyers said that getting their arms around agentic ad buying and how campaigns actually get executed is one of their top worries for 2026—ranking right up there with the usual macro and…
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AI Agents: Plenty of Autopilot, Not Enough Seatbelts
MIT and a stack of academic collaborators reviewed documentation for 30 widely used “agentic” AI systems. TLDR: a lot of capability, not a lot of paperwork. Across eight disclosure categories, most systems provide little to no public detail on risks, safety testing, or governance. The gaps are basic. In many cases, it’s unclear whether you…
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S4 Capital betting on agency subscription model
S4 Capital’s Sir Martin Sorrell is talking less about whether the billable hour declines, and more about what replaces it. The answer, at least for S4, is subscriptions. On the company’s latest earnings call, Sorrell described a model built around fixed annual fees that bundle senior talent with agentic workflows, brand-specific knowledge bases, and periodic…
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Butler/Till’s agentic media-buying tests cut costs and time
Butler/Till just wrapped its first real-world test of an “agentic” programmatic buy for Geloso Beverage Group, working with PubMatic—and the numbers are hard to ignore. Across two flights (Dec. 2025–Jan.) running on CTV, online, and mobile app inventory from names like Samsung, Paramount, Vizio, and Tubi, the setup cut supply chain costs by 82% (with…
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The Trade Desk Lets Claude Push the Buttons (Carefully)
The Trade Desk is testing whether advertisers can build campaigns using Anthropic’s Claude. Speaking at Marketecture Live in New York, CEO Jeff Green described a closed beta that lets a subset of advertisers create campaigns through a large language model. Details on what Claude actually does in the workflow are, for now, thin. Green’s broader…
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AI in Shoulder Pads: NBCUniversal Tests AI Ad Agents During NFL Playoff
NBCUniversal just turned what’s arguably the most old-school corner of ad buying—live linear NFL TV—into a sandbox for AI experimentation. Partnering with RPA, Newton Research, and FreeWheel, NBCU successfully tested AI agents on both the buy and sell side to handle key parts of the sales process for a playoff game. This wasn’t about full…
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From Billable Hours to AI-Driven Value in Advertising
The ad game is looking a lot less like Don Draper’s boardroom and a lot more like an API call. As AI reshapes the fundamentals of media buying, creative development, and performance optimization, agencies are building platforms instead of just campaigns. Stagwell’s The Machine, Omnicom’s Omni, and WPP’s Open Pro are just a few of…
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WPP’s “Super Agents” Want to Work for You
Earlier this month, WPP showed its cards at CES with a new internal tool called Agent Hub, a collection of AI-powered “super agents” living inside its WPP Open platform. Think of it as a bespoke app store populated with digital brains trained on the company’s formidable roster of branding, strategy, creative, and behavioral science experts.…
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Code and Theory’s AI ‘Machine’ Wants to Run Your Entire Marketing Stack
At CES this year, Code and Theory quietly introduced The Machine—an agentic AI operating system designed to live inside the tools marketers already use, not replace them. Built to bridge creative, media, and data workflows, The Machine connects directly with familiar platforms like Adobe, Figma, and Workfront, enabling teams to scale content production, audience analysis,…
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Why Marketers Hesitate to Fully Embrace Agentic AI
Agentic AI has spent 2025 positioning itself as an all-in-one marketing team—thinking, writing, and executing campaigns with minimal human input. But despite the headlines, marketers aren’t exactly handing over the keys. The concept of agentic AI—AI systems with context, access to tools and decision making authority working cooperatively with little oversight—has intrigued brands, yet hesitation…
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Stagwell Taps Gradial to Unclog the Marketing Bottleneck
Stagwell is doubling down on AI-fueled marketing efficiency by teaming up with Gradial, a relatively young but fast-scaling player in the agentic AI space. The idea is to connect the dots between creative, design, and automated execution through AI agents that cut down on redundant workflows and crank out personalized content across channels. It’s all…
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Inside GM’s AI Content Engine Metropolis
General Motors is taking a torque wrench to traditional marketing, putting AI squarely under the hood of its creative operations. After pulling marketing strategy, data, and insights in-house last year, the automaker developed Metropolis—a proprietary AI content engine trained solely on GM’s brand guidelines and vehicle specs. Built in collaboration with Monks and powered by…
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S4 Capital Bets on Bots, Not Bodies
S4 Capital is shifting its operations to focus on AI-powered agents, automating traditional agency tasks like content production, which reduces timelines significantly. Executive director Wes ter Haar claims that 65% of agency work can already be managed by AI. The company envisions an “AI workforce” that integrates strategy, content, and media into tech-led services while…
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Furniture.com Moves from Aggregator to Marketplace with Agentic AI
Furniture.com has integrated an agentic AI-powered buy button, enabling customers to complete purchases directly on the site. A parent agent manages general details, while specialized agents handle retailer specifics, ensuring real-time updates on inventory and pricing. This shift aims to increase the site’s conversion rate and repeat customers ahead of the holiday season, moving from…
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Consumers Warm up to AI Shopping Agents
Consumers are increasingly embracing AI as a shopping aid, with 38% of bridge millennials and 32% overall using AI tools for retail tasks. Baby boomers are also participating, with 28% utilizing AI. However, 85% express concerns about privacy. Leading platforms like Perplexity, OpenAI, and Google are enhancing AI shopping experiences with advanced functionalities. Consumer hesitation…
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How Walmart’s AI Agents Are Changing Advertising Strategies
Walmart is developing an AI-powered command center to enhance ad strategies and streamline retail operations. Central to this initiative is “Marty,” an AI tool for automating ad campaigns and seller onboarding. Walmart aims to efficiently link trends, manufacturing, and influencer marketing through AI, fundamentally transforming how media is bought and sold.
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IPG’s agentic e-commerce solution boosts sales
Interpublic Group (IPG) has launched Agentic Systems for Commerce (ASC), a data-driven platform aimed at enhancing e-commerce decision-making for brands. Currently piloted by 20 brands, ASC has shown significant sales growth by integrating various data points. Supported by IPG’s AI expertise, it seeks to unify fragmented commerce tools into one effective solution.
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AI Agents and Billable Hours: Omnicom’s Pending Revenue Rethink
Omnicom isn’t just weaving AI into its workflows—it’s giving the tech a corner office. During the company’s latest earnings call, CTO Paolo Yuvienco spotlighted a growing internal web of custom-built AI agents fed by Omnicom’s Omni data platform. These aren’t your average productivity bots; they’re tag-teaming strategy teams to simulate focus groups, fine-tune campaigns in…
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Agentic AI Is the Shiny Object—And 40% of Projects May End Up on the Shelf
Gartner’s latest forecast throws cold water on the gold rush toward agentic AI, predicting that more than 40% of related projects will get the axe by 2027. Blame a combination of fuzzy business value, ballooning costs, and flimsy risk mitigation. A January 2025 Gartner poll found only 19% of organizations were going big on this…
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Walmart Gives Its App a Brain—Meet Sparky, the Agentic AI
Walmart just booted up “Sparky,” a generative AI assistant tucked into its app, and it’s gunning to be more sous-chef than search bar. Rather than simply spitting out grill listings when you type “cookout,” Sparky can analyze weather forecasts, build a menu, and arrange delivery—all before you’ve finished your iced tea. Unlike those clunky retail…
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When 30,000 Agents Just Aren’t Enough: WPP Ups the Ante
WPP has rolled out a turbocharged version of its internal AI tool with the launch of AgentBuilder Pro inside the WPP Open platform. Already fuelling over 30,000 AI agents across the organization, this upgrade turns the dial on what these digital coworkers can do. With enhancements like ‘Steps’ for multi-phase reasoning and decision-making, and multi-agent…
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When Shopping Bots Take the Wheel, Walmart Wants a Front Seat
Walmart is busy prepping for a not-so-distant future where your AI assistant orders toilet paper, birthday party supplies, and TVs—no human input required. At the center of this shift is “agentic commerce,” where autonomous AI bots handle everything from browsing to checkout. Walmart’s CTO, Hari Vasudev, says that these agents bypass traditional search and advertising…
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From Copilots to Colleagues: Agentic AI Gets Down to Business
It’s official: chatbots are out, and AI agents are clocking in. This Computerworld feature dives deep into the rapid rise of agentic AI, a new generation of autonomous systems capable of managing entire workflows, not just responding to prompts. Unlike their chatty predecessors, these agents are executing complex tasks, making decisions, and even collaborating with…
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Is Agentic AI Advertising’s Next Big Disruption?
Large Language Models and generative AI have rapidly become widely-adopted tools in the advertising ecosystem. We’ve experimented with prompt engineering, created synthetic personas, and flirted with automation in content production. But a new frontier is emerging fast—and it’s far more transformative than AI that simply completes tasks when asked. Welcome to the era of agentic…
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Built for Bots: Inside the First Agentic-First Agency
10,000 Robots (10KR) isn’t just a catchy agency name—it’s a literal headcount. The newly launched agency is powered by more AI agents than human employees, and its founders (all former YML executives) intend to keep it that way. With AI handling tasks typically farmed out to junior staff, 10KR relies on a lean team of…
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Your Next Customer Is an AI—Here’s How to Advertise to It
A new study out of the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria tested how AI agents—like GPT-4o, Claude Sonnet 3.7, and Gemini 2.0—respond to online ads during hotel booking tasks. The verdict? Machines aren’t just browsing; they’re booking. And some, like GPT-4o, are doing it with 95% decisiveness. The researchers built a custom travel platform…
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From 40 Days to 4 Hours—How Jellyfish’s AI Agents Are Rewiring Media Buying
Jellyfish, a Brandtech Group agency, is leaning into AI for efficiency — and the results are eye-opening. By automating tasks traditionally handled by junior media buyers — like campaign setup, reporting dashboards, and daily budget optimization — Jellyfish has slashed campaign launch times by a massive 65%. Instead of waiting up to 40 days, clients…
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KPMG exploring AI agents
KPMG is actively piloting AI agents, focusing on making these technologies secure, practical, and adaptable for tasks that assist their internal teams, particularly in auditing. Swami Chandrasekaran, who leads KPMG’s AI and Data Labs, emphasized the firm’s cautious approach; they are exploring the potential of AI agents to perform specific functions without rolling out any…
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4A’s Noteworthy News – 23rd Edition
THE BIG STORY: The Rise of Agentic AI – Revolution or Reframe? Agentic AI is pushing boundaries, with platforms like Microsoft (this week) and Salesforce (in September) announcing robust autonomous agents poised to reshape workflows across industries. Microsoft’s new “co-pilots” aim to shoulder end-to-end processes with little to no human touch, and Salesforce’s AgentForce offers…