Media Industry Embraces AI Agents: From Advisory Roles to Creative Efficiency

The advertising and media world is rapidly adopting AI agents, but most companies are taking a cautious approach by keeping these tools in advisory roles rather than giving them direct control over budgets or major decisions.

According to a recent Gartner survey, 81% of marketing technology executives are either piloting or rolling out AI agents at their companies. The primary goal remains consistent across the industry: eliminate routine tasks and create operational efficiencies.

Key Industry Developments

Media Planning and Buying: Companies like LG Ad Solutions have developed their Agentiv platform to coordinate multiple AI agents, cutting campaign report compilation time from two days to just five hours. However, none of these systems actually execute media purchases - spending decisions remain with human experts.

Publisher Operations: Immediate Media has built an AI agent that sits on their PRISM data platform, allowing sales teams to instantly access audience segments and campaign performance data that previously took 48 hours to compile. This enables real-time responses to client briefs during conversations.

Creative Production: Creative agency Mekanism reports dramatic time savings, reducing video production from eight weeks to just one week using Google's Gemini-based agents. At Rapp, AI agents now serve as the starting point for presentations and sales decks, cutting creative strategy work by approximately 50%.

Current Limitations and Challenges

Despite the enthusiasm, significant barriers remain. Agency executives note that while content creation happens faster, approval processes haven't adapted to match the new speed. Additionally, the quality and reliability of AI agents varies considerably across different platforms and use cases.

The industry has also developed the AdCP protocol, an open-source communication standard that allows AI agents from different companies to interact using a common language, suggesting broader collaboration is on the horizon.

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