In the third quarter of last year, the adtech industry hit the acceleration button on embedding AI into its core operations.
A host of adtech platforms announced new AI-powered offerings. In addition, Google announced the global launch of AI Max for Search campaigns, consumer food giant Mondelez announced an AI partnership with Accenture and Publicis Groupe, and the world’s largest media buyer, WPP, announced it was phasing out siloed teams and rigid hierarchies, replacing them with fluid, cross-functional collaborations that combine human expertise with AI capabilities.
Since then, AI platform valuation and Big Tech investment in AI has reached feverish heights. The major players, Google, Meta, and Amazon, have vowed to invest billions of dollars into their AI strategies, in order to fund growth in their cloud, AI and advertising businesses. They are all hoping that consumer-led advertising will provide them with super profits, and market domination.
This year will see adtech providers and platforms increasingly under pressure to prove their value and performance versus the Big Tech Walled Gardens. By the end of 2028, it’s estimated that $3 trillion will be invested in data centers around the world. The challenge for digital advertiser technology platforms will be to make their systems and bidding engines valuable and essential to marketers.
AI as the Saviour for Adtech’s Complexity
At the same time, marketers are demanding better results from their existing campaigns, less complexity, even before AI tools enhance their media spend.
“Programmatic was meant to make media buying faster, smarter and more accountable. But over the years the system has become a complex web of DSPs, SSPs, data brokers, verification vendors, resellers and intermediaries. Lost? We are. And ROI certainly has been, too,” wrote The Drum reporter Maria Greaves. She added that a movement is now underway for more transparency: “This shift is about ‘de-layering’: reducing unnecessary steps between budget and inventory, improving visibility on fees, and making more deliberate choices about where and how media runs.”
Enter AI, which promises to revolutionize programmatic advertising. Comscore, in its annual State of Programmatic 2026 report, said AI has entered the mainstream, and new expectations have been set.
“The current state of programmatic points to a clear inflection moment for the industry. Investment remains resilient, but expectations have fundamentally shifted. Marketers are no longer optimizing for scale alone—they are demanding greater control, higher quality, and provable performance from every dollar deployed,” the report noted. “As AI becomes increasingly embedded in planning and optimization workflows, the focus is moving from experimentation to execution.”
The Comscore report also said 82% of marketers were now rating AI-powered optimization as important when evaluating partners, reflecting a shift toward outcome-led success metrics like ROAS, conversion rate and cross-channel performance directly inside programmatic platforms.*
Enter Agentic AI, which also promises to fundamentally change the way that platforms buy and sell advertising inventory, across all channels.
“Agentic AI could fundamentally change how you interact with ad platforms and perform your job. Whether you work in ad ops, account management, sales, or strategy, if your job requires you to log in to an ad platform to perform a task, then you should understand what agentic AI means for you,” said industry writer Trey Titone in the third quarter of 2025. He noted that in ad tech, users typically interact with multiple systems, such as DSPs, brand safety vendors, creative ad servers, order management systems, and more.
“These systems typically already have integrations together, but the usefulness of those integrations could increase significantly through agentic AI,” wrote Titone.
Fast forward six months and agentic AI-led media buying is quickly becoming a mainstay of the adtech industry. New standards have been created, and participants in the adtech chain say they are moving beyond pilot stage into true commercial execution.
The Benefits of AI in Advertising
That means agencies and media buyers must understand how the new agentic ads stack will work. There remains a battle between industry bodies, who are defining new agentic AI systems, and those who want to promote their own open source initiatives. Still, as Comscore points out, most brands and agencies are focusing on extracting better performance from AI and machine learning systems.
“Buyers are relying on AI to improve performance at scale - particularly across audience targeting and modeling, campaign pacing and bid automation, measurement and attribution, and fraud detection and brand safety,” said Comscore. “Creative generation remains part of the mix, but ranks lower than applications tied directly to optimization, measurement, and accountability, reinforcing that AI’s primary role in programmatic is to drive outcomes, not just efficiency.”
A Marketing Trends report from Smartly predicts the advent of AI in digital advertising will supercharge the way brands launch campaigns.
“In 2026, efficiency will become a signal of AI maturity. The most advanced teams use predictive intelligence to anticipate performance, optimize spend in real time, and eliminate waste before it happens. Marketers with the lowest media waste report stronger results across every stage of the funnel. They launch faster, personalize more effectively, and measure impact with greater confidence. What sets them apart isn’t luck. It’s foresight. These teams use AI-powered optimization and pre-launch intelligence to anticipate results before spend is lost.”
The platform provider said AI isn’t just optimizing campaigns after launch. It’s shaping them before they begin, powering creative intelligence, predictive insights, and smarter decisions across every channel.
“Advanced marketing teams aren’t waiting for results, they’re predicting them. Predictive AI now powers creative scoring, budget allocation, and campaign validation before launch, turning efficiency into foresight,” the AI platform said.
As AI-powered systems become the main pathway to win more customers, some of the basics of digital marketing will not change. As noted by InMoment, a customer experience technology company, consumers will still desire brands to provide trustworthy experiences, and not take all of their data needlessly.
“Consumers aren’t anti-personalisation, but they are against pointless data grabs. The most desired use of personalisation isn’t flashy—it’s functional,” said InMoment, in a report on APAC Consumer Trends. The top-ranked personalised experience? Streamlined, efficient support, such as not having to repeat your issue to multiple support agents. It’s the number one benefit for 26% of consumers. These stats signal a strong preference for utility over novelty.”
11/07/2022
