The pitch for agentic ad buying has been that agents plan, buy, and optimize media, relieving humans from having to do the grunt work. September has shown a more grounded reality: small budgets, tangible results, and plenty of humans still watching closely.
Apostra—which has pivoted from sustainability to agentic—lets AI agents handle tasks across media buying, like discovering, negotiating, and approving deals, to executing them across digital publishers, linear TV, and in-store audio.
Ad buyers can use Apostra to connect with other agents across media buying and selling with agentic connectors for major platforms live on the platform. Marketers can manage campaigns across Meta, Google, Pinterest, Reddit, Spotify, and ChatGPT.
Other adtech players too are assembling similar systems. The Trade Desk is building a central AI conversational interface that will route media buyers towards a growing roster of specialized agents. PubMatic AgenticOS launched in January, while Magnite has introduced a buyer agent and an agentic orchestration layer spanning buy- and sell-side functions. Kargo introduced Project Kera, an AI-backed planning and buying interface in Spring.
But September has seen more of a concerted agentic push beyond just media buying.
Runway, an AI video startup, is also getting into the ad business with Runway Ads, an AI agent that can create variations of existing ads, localizing them for Meta, Google, and TikTok. It then pulls the performance data.
At Dreamforce, Southwest Airlines told me its AI agents will soon handle more complex tasks, including completing a flight ticket purchase.
