Apostra—which pitches itself as a neutral meeting point for agents working with brands and publishers—doesn’t take a cut of media spend, as ad networks might. Instead, it’s positioning itself as a software-as-a-service, with a fee that doesn’t increase with the amount of ad dollars flowing through it. That could give advertisers a reason to favor a neutral coordination layer over platforms like Amazon or Meta, according to Andrew Frank, vp, distinguished analyst at Gartner.
But even if the plumbing works, there are hard questions about who is responsible for the decisions agents make.
“The problem is agents are supposed to make strategic decisions about budget allocations,” said Frank. “If agents reallocate, say $10 million from TV to creator inventory, and performance drops, who’s accountable? Agentic buying introduces this whole new decision layer whose recommendations may not be fully transparent.”
While AI might reveal some of its reasoning behind a decision, there’s always a chance that that reasoning may not work out. For brands, that could keep budgets in the experimental bucket.
Finally, handing over control to the robots will be particularly difficult in premium advertising, where large deals are still heavily relationship-driven and where publishers and buyers have spent years building their own infrastructure, Frank said.
