• by Laurie Sullivan , 3 hours ago

Google’s long-term vision is to create an "agentic" advertising ecosystem where autonomous AI tools handle complex processes, from inventory discovery and pricing to multiparty negotiations, as well as to answer complex questions on ad campaigns.

The goal is partly to develop specialized agents for publishers and agencies to more efficiently negotiate and execute campaigns directly from its platform.

“Agentic capabilities are transforming the ad tech industry as we know it, and we’re working with leading publishers and agencies to build for a future where AI will improve the campaign lifecycle,” Peentoo Patel, senior product management director at Google, wrote in a blog post, which mentions everything from finding the correct inventory to pricing and campaign execution.

Today, Google announced "Ask Ad Manager," an AI assistant designed to make it easier for publisher ad teams to troubleshoot campaigns, eliminate slow, repetitive tasks that require human labor and delay business shifts. 

At launch, Ask Ad Manager focuses on three problem areas, which include troubleshooting when a campaign is not delivering the expected performance. Publishers can ask more complex questions about specific bidder performance and how campaigns run compared with industry benchmarks, and it also provides a navigation feature that directs publishers to make suggested changes or find relevant data.

Testing began in mid-June for publishers including Yahoo, which integrated Ad Manager into custom agents.

To make this integration easier, Google plans to release new developer tools later this year to support key workflows.

When launched later this year, the upgrade will include technology to bring in first- and third-party agents to interact at a larger scale.

Ask Ad Manager will not make autonomous decisions, because it requires a human to implement any suggestions, but Google expects this to change along with other AI agentic tools as the technology develops.