May 14, 2026  |  SIGN UP

Jim Cooper
DIGIDAY, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

As agentic AI continues to sweep over media and marketing – it was a central theme across upfront presentations this week and on the tip of execs’ tongues in C-suites and at networking dinners in midtown Manhattan – one thing has become clear, marketers don’t trust it.

The week prior we hosted Digiday’s Programmatic Marketing Summit out in Palm Springs, Calif., and the construction of guardrails for agents, as we report this morning, was an imperative discussed in measured but clear tones on stage and far more urgently during two town hall sessions where brand and agency execs spoke under the cover of Chatham House Rules.

Campaign creation, optimizing ad buys, drafting pitch decks and CPM strategy distorted by agentic hallucination would be a calamity for agencies setting those initiatives – and for the brands investing in them.

“Would it blow a quarter’s worth of budget in a weekend? All of that’s well-founded, so that’s a fear,” said Henry Webster, seniot vp, director of analytics and insight at KSM Media, who spoke onstage during DPMS.

Humans in the loop? Maybe it’s best if humans surround the loop.

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