• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, Yesterday

We need to have a conversation about AI in media planning.  More specifically, what will agencies be forced to do in the age of agentic media?

AI Agents are everywhere now.  Just watching TV last night, I saw three different companies advertising about the agents they are creating, and the concept of agents is quickly overtaking the media planning world.  Agentic media planning is approaching quickly, with agents now able to intake queries and prompts for audiences, flight dates and other basic buying parameters and activate them in a trading desk seat just as easily as any media buyer. Even more interesting, agents can be set up to recommend and even implement optimization across demand-side platforms, so the question quickly arises: What role does the agency team play when agents can do much of the work?

This is the general question facing the use of AI in the workforce: the fear that our jobs will be replaced.  I have written about this often, and I don’t believe that it's as existential a threat as the media makes it out to be, simply because humans are adaptable and we created this technology, so we need to view it as a tool. 

More simply stated, yes, the role of a media buyer may not exist in a few years, but that role can be repurposed to some other set of responsibilities in the organization.

One of the common gripes against agencies is that they tend to pitch with the best people and once the account is won, they replace them with lower-level people to do the execution work.  This leads to a cycle of agency reviews every few years.

In this new future, the best teams will still be there for strategic planning and guidance, but they will instead use a team of agents for implementation. These tools are standard and the teams managing those tools will be standardized as well, so you won’t be relying on less-experienced teams. 

I see the agentic workflow as a way for agencies to use their best talent more efficiently and supplement with technology, which means more consistency and better margins over time because they will need fewer people to execute. 

So, what happens to those people who were being hired out of school for execution?  My guess is they shift to more experiential activations, which I predict will continue to increase in value over the coming years. 

You cannot evaluate AI in a silo.  AI creates efficiency in media planning and execution.  AI is also going to overhaul digital media. I’ve been writing  the last few weeks that I see a future that revolves around video, generative search, mobile, social, DOOH and experiential media, with a clear decrease in display and traditional search.  Those lower-level, or entry-level people, will shift to more experiential and event-based marketing activations.  Agencies can charge more for those, too.  As a result, agencies are going to shift from a purely digital go-to-market strategy and will start to embrace the balance of digital and IRL once again. 

Needless to say, there is a LOT of change impending in the ad agency landscape. 

Where do you think agency services are headed in the next few years?