• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, Yesterday

Cisco Systems, known for supporting the internet’s architecture, has built the pieces to develop a foundation that allows advertisers to scale intelligent, AI-driven strategies with accuracy, performance and security as well as speed and visibility.

On Tuesday at Cisco Live in San Diego, California, the company will unveil what it is calling a “future-ready AI network architecture" as it moves further into advertising.

As advertisers and the media being bought and the ads being served become more AI-driven, this foundation will support everything from workplace technology and hardware to a new security approach and AI capabilities that manage the network to support its partners.

With changes focused on real-time creative optimization and programmatic ad placements, Cisco’s network and security updates will provide the foundation to reduce latency, increase reliability, and essential for powering advanced ad tech platforms, real-time bidding systems, and dynamic engines to keep content personal.

Agents will have built-in security, according to Craig Connors, CTO for infrastructure and security at Cisco Systems, who spoke at a roundtable for journalists. “We are infusing security all the way from the silicon, the chip, to the security operations center,” he said.

Cisco will have the power to support agentic AI across the advertising stack. The agents will autonomously make decisions and follow through with actions such as media buying, audience segmentation, and campaign optimization.

Its AI Canvas and AgenticOps products offer secure, collaborative spaces where marketing, IT, and data teams can co-create and troubleshoot with full visibility, accelerating campaign delivery and responsiveness.

Updates to Cisco’s network intelligence software ThousandEyes and data platform Splunk provide visibility throughout the process from ad server to end user to enable faster identification and resolution of issues impacting campaign delivery, audience engagement, or website experience, even at peak Internet traffic times.

As advertisers deploy autonomous tools and manage high volumes of user data, Cisco’s zero-trust architecture and new threat-containment features will help protect consumer data and the AI systems that process it, and help to maintain compliance.

Through Cisco’s Webex updates for AI Agent templates and camera improvements, advertisers and brands gain the ability to support hyper-personalized customer interactions including virtual product demos, AI-powered customer support, or immersive brand experiences.

Cisco estimates that by 2028, 68% of all customer service and support interactions with technology vendors could be handled by agentic AI.

Some 92% of organizations say the support and services they receive will become more important, as customer experiences are supported by growing IT complexity.