May 15, 2026  |  SIGN UP

Jim Cooper
DIGIDAY, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Our most-read story this week, a cases 'For and Against' piece on the use of agentic AI in media buying, nicely captured the tension around the promise and peril of tapping the power of AI.

In the positive column, agents could be a salve for legacy programmatic pain points, such as ad-tech taxes, lack of supply-chain transparency and perhaps the open web’s addressability. In the not so positive column, brands see agents potentially creating a new constellation of black boxes orbiting the traditional centers of DSP and SSP murk and creating even more chaos in the process.

But the pressure and temptation to lean into agentic, especially for agencies looking at AI expertise as a capability to market to client prospects, must be heavy indeed. Groups like Omnicom, Stagwell and Butler/Till are stepping down this path. Where will it lead? Only the agents know.

Read our most important AI coverage here every Friday, ICYMI.

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THE PROGRAMMATIC MARKETER

The case for and against agentic media buying

The debate resurfaced recently after Omnicom CEO John Wren said the holdco was testing agent-to-agent media buys designed to create more direct publisher relationships and reduce what he described as the “toll” taken by ad-tech intermediaries.

MEMBER EXCLUSIVE

Future of Marketing Briefing: The brands winning at AI started with process not tech

Buried beneath all the noise about agents and autonomous workflows is something that actually cuts to the heart of why there are so many conflicting views about where AI adoption really is right now — and more importantly, why so much of it isn’t working.

PARTNER INSIGHTS FROM CONTENTFUL

How teams are embracing AI without losing the human touch

While AI is changing how work gets done, it’s not changing who does it just yet. The focus now is shifting from finding the perfect tech stack to prioritizing AI that works alongside marketers.

MARKETING ON PLATFORMS

TikTok launches MCP server to let AI agents run campaigns

The TikTok Ads MCP means the laborious, click-heavy work of building and running campaigns — setting up creatives, adjusting bids, shifting budgets and tweaking targeting — get handed off to AI agents rather than done manually by a media buyer starting at an ads manager dashboard.

A MESSAGE FROM SPORTRADAR

As fan behavior fragments, brands look to data to keep pace

Fandom is no longer a linear journey in which audiences tune in to kickoff and switch off at the final whistle — and campaign planning should reflect this.

See how it works

MARKETING ON PLATFORMS

OpenAI makes it easier to run shopping ads in ChatGPT

OpenAI is making it easier for e-commerce companies to run ads on ChatGPT, adding automation that lets retailers generate ads directly from their product catalogues rather than building them one by one.

MEMBER EXCLUSIVE

Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit May Recap: How marketers are navigating agentic ad buying

Agentic ad buying isn’t coming soon; it’s already here. And it was the dominant theme at the May 2026 edition of the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit, held May 6 to 8 in Palm Springs, Calif.

PARTNER INSIGHTS FROM NEXXEN

Native CTV is capturing viewer attention on the home screen

Increasingly, viewers turn on their TVs without a fixed plan. Nielsen estimates that viewers spend as long as 10.5 minutes browsing on the home screen before they decide what to watch.