Digiday Media Buying Summit October Recap: Assessing the ups and challenges of AI’s spread across the media agency landscape

Each Digiday event kicks off with the edit team breaking down current industry themes. Here’s where we think we are:

• The ubiquity of AI

AI is inevitable in its influence but also its impact. Whether it’s agentic buying or planning, AEO/GEO or guiding clients through ways to understand and implement AI, it’s changing processes and compressing timelines.

• The danger of AI

But warning signs are everywhere, from ensuring human oversight of anything to do with client budgets to reining in token usage or insufficient ROI. AI will factor in some way with everything we discuss these next few days.

• Fees are stifling client innovation

The drive toward lower funnel, performance results has dragged a spotlight onto the hidden fees that agencies often struggle with or sweep under the rug. How can transparency sit alongside better results?

• The rise of influencers and creators

There’s no stopping this train, as more and more brands opt to devote a larger share of marketing dollars to the field. When is it too much? And how to ensure performance is still delivered.

• Principal media: yay or nay?

If you’re a holding company agency, principal media is a reality in some part of your business. But are there ways to be part of it without feeling you sold your soul?

Case for and against: principal media
DMBS kicked off with an interactive session that invited a debate on principal media, then asked the audience to vote on which side won the debate — since it’s the most widely debated topic in the media agency world. Principal media puts agencies in the position of buying and selling inventory for and to their clients. To its detractors, including Kamran Asghar, CEO of Crossmedia, who argued against, it has corrupted the meaning of “agency” by putting agencies on both sides of the investment equation.

But the argument can be made — as it was by Forrester’s vp and senior agency analyst Jay Pattisall — that it’s here to stay for those agencies with the scale to pull it off, so long as there can be sufficient transparency for the client in the process. The final vote: 72% opposed principal media. 

• “It’s here, it’s not going anywhere… so if you’re going to do it, do it well.” — Patisall
• “Just because it exists doesn’t mean you should use it. A little like a nuclear bomb, or AI.” — Asghar

The new agency talent equation
AI and emerging tools are making it possible to build ideas that would have been impossible just a few years ago. M+C Saatchi CEO Nadja Bellan-White explored what this convergence means for agency leaders — from how creative and media teams need to work together to the new kinds of talent, skills and perspectives agencies need to hire to meet the demands of clients today. The key: balancing human talent and the temptation of technology, most acutely AI.

• “I’m a big proponent of technology and how technology drives the level of efficiency, but I think we’re reaching a point of over-engineering where we forgot the humanization factor. And oftentimes, what I’m seeing now is an over-reliance on artificial intelligence, an over-reliance on technology.” — Bellan-White
• “AI can be a good sparring partner… but you need to be the one to make the decision.” — Bellan-White
• “In the race for efficiency we’ve forgotten to train our young people the way we were trained. You have to have them run at briefs without an over dependency on AI tools… You have to go old school.” — Bellan-White

Injecting more transparency and certainty in media
In modern media investment, too many brands are playing roulette — relying on blind platform algorithms, chasing self-reported metrics and reacting to phantom signals that lead straight to knee-jerk budget pivots. Tack on ecosystems cluttered with opacity, hidden fees and black-box attribution. Feels like the deck’s stacked against media specialists, right? Devin Bellamy of sports gaming disruptor Underdog and Eden Collective founder and CEO Alison Monk engaged in a no-BS look at the radical media rigor and intellectual humility needed to outsmart outspenders.

• “The reason that we took a transparent point of view was so that and the reason that we de-emphasized buying is so that we could make sure our clients were confident in our unbiased perspective about where they should spend their media dollars and how much.” — Monk

The creator authenticity problem
Creators have become a powerful part of the media mix, but as the business matures, authenticity is getting harder to define — and even harder to protect. A session featuring Alex Mathieu head of creative strategy & vp at creator agency Open Influence, explored what makes creator partnerships actually feel credible, where brands and agencies get it wrong and how marketers can balance scale, performance and genuine audience connection. As Mathieu said:

• ”In a saturated marketplace, creators are often the best solution.”
• “Beyond the basic brand safety guidelines, vetting and making sure everything is all kosher when it comes to moving forward with different creators, I think you have to look for creators that make sense for your brand… that either have already talked about your brand or have experienced it where they would be logical for your brand.”

When media meets creative tech
The walls between media, creative, data and technology are getting more porous by the day, especially as AI cuts across them all by dint of its value. How far into the creative and design process should media agencies go? And which AI tools and platforms are actually helping agencies plan, build and buy more effectively, rather than simply adding another layer of tech? Laurel Burton, CEO of Instrument and Carly Gomez, Crocs’ CMO, walked the audience through their website, social media and e-commerce efforts this year, and how technology sped up the process while digging deeper insights.

• “My prediction is the exact opposite that websites are dying … I think they are the absolute central hub that needs to create a consistent experience because they’re feeding both that consumer and also that answer engine. You literally can’t be a product and a brand without this as a channel.” — Burton

Retail media’s shakeout
The retail media gold rush created an increasingly crowded market. Now the question is who survives. Are advertisers finally ready to cull the long tail of lower-value networks, and what separates the retail media businesses that become essential from those that become expendable? Dentsu’s new head of commerce Aisha Khan addressed these issues, concluding that while some consolidation is inevitable, growth in this sector will continue to grow because it offers media agencies new opportunities to harness closed-loop measurement in a way that benefits both upper- and lower-funnel marketing efforts. Khan also believes in-store will be the next area that’s ripe for growth and expansion:

• “Retail media has been relegated to this performance marketing channel. But if you think about it, with the in-store and the shopper marketing experience, you still need that unmissable creative component too.”
• “AI has accelerated this idea of of agile MMM, or incrementality — more traditional MMM becoming more sophisticated.”

Do you know what AI is costing your agency?

Agencies and clients across the industry are realizing finally that AI gains mean little if you can’t fathom the real operating costs associated with AI systems or agentic tools. Christina Riccitelli, chief innovation & analytics officer, OpAd Media, and Tony Russo, vp AI innovation & strategy, Mile Marker, represented two agencies with different philosophies on the tech, as they attempt to balance the benefits of AI with a close understanding of its actual cost.

• “The industry has changed so much, right? From the beginning of the year, we saw boardrooms saying ‘adopt AI at all costs.’ You saw these massive companies doing token maxxing, spending hundreds of millions of dollars … but it’s not an open spigot anymore.” — Russo
• “When it comes to disclosing client costs, so much of what we’re doing is internal, and we’re trying to package it into this next phase of being able to monetize it in some capacity. Ideally, down the road, we would be very transparent and say these are the tools that we’re using, because I think it’s important for everyone to kind of know how the sauce is made.” — Riccitelli

Redesigning your teams around AI
Agencies across the globe are investing in AI applications in pursuit of productivity gains. Few have thought hard about how to bed in their new capabilities and operationalize the tech. Gila Wilensky, evp and head of data and media, North America at Monks, walked the audience through how the company has rethought staff structures and client-facing teams to fully take advantage of AI:

• “AI cannot take risks. That’s always going to be our job. AI is not creative. That’s always going to be our job. So no matter what level you are in your career, there’s opportunity to be strategic, to be creative, to take risks, to test.”
• “We don’t have this role today, but there will be a full-time job of AI checkers. That’s my premonition. That’s going to be a career that our kids will do when they are older — there’ll be AI chapters in the same way that people in journalism used to be like fact checkers.”

Go Fish’s approach to agentic planning and buying
Agentic media planning and buying tools have become an area of intense focus for many agencies and clients. Beyond the hype, however, there are decisions to be made over what agents are actually best placed to do, and how much control they require to operate properly. David Dweck, president of Go Fish Digital, called out the opportunities to apply agentic tools while also pointing to areas where it should be kept away:

• “Anyone who’s building an agentic platform to sit on top of Meta or Google is going to be years behind where they need to be, and I think people have got to see where the train is headed.”
• “We’re trying to basically try to remove as many layers in the DSP, and then the agents work to remove as many layers in the supply side. So we should have lower costs against inventory that’s far higher quality without being complex.”

Making outcomes-based relationships work
Outcome or performance-based client relationships have emerged as a response to pressures facing the agency business model. But while the idea can be theoretically attractive, hashing out an outcome-based arrangement with a client can be much harder in practice. Morgan Scarnato, chief strategy officer of CourtAvenue Media, broke down how to construct an outcomes-based relationship that works for both agency and client:

• “My team coins it ‘The Cake,’ which is this layered cake where each layer … has key things that we focus in on. So, business outcomes. We focus in on, brand awareness with studies. We focus in on equity. We focus in on their sales outcomes. Now, as everyone in this room can attest, it’s not always something we can measure one to one.”

“AI just ramps up the level of crap.”

“I tell our staff, ‘Do your resume every six months, and if you’re not learning stuff here, advancing your skill sets, you should quit and go work someplace else.’”

“I’ve actually been surprised by how much AI content [there is at] a higher strategy level … places like the VPs and the C-suite. I know they know how to do these things. I don’t think they want to take the time to do it. Because this is much easier.”

“It comes down to the brief. I’ve seen some of the worst briefs I’ve ever seen in my career recently, and it’s because they’re so disjointed and there’s no through line on what the not only the marketing goal is as well as the business goal … I think AI is making it worse.”

“Yeah, briefs have definitely gotten worse, and they’re also like jam packed with a lot of things that feel like they start to blur together the swim lanes between what media’s job is versus a creative job or a PR driven job.”

“There’s two forks in the road for the world of agencies. One fork is, ‘I’m going to fully automate everything and eliminate as many humans and costs as possible.’ The other fork in the road is, ‘I’m going to create efficiency and enable the humans I already have, and lean into expertise and make those experts more efficient at what they do, so they can deliver more value for clients.’ So, if I was working at an organization that’s going for full automation and limiting humans, I would be scared. I would argue that’s not the right strategy.”

“So if we’re not pushing the staff to learn new things and keep the sort of ship afloat, you’re going to have these issues where an AI bot spends $10 million versus $10,000 in a DSP, and it’s going to be like, ‘I don’t know what to do’.”

• AI’s impact

AI remains a real question mark on the future of media and marketing. There are so many ways it can help — and agencies are putting it to work. But there are risks for companies cultivating an over-reliance on this technology, from corporate slop to the expanding sea of sameness.

Bottom line: Humans need to remain at the center to make gains and prevent potentially catastrophic mistakes.

• Talk to your partner

Clients can be great partners but that relationship is under pressure to the point of counterproductive behavior and not speaking the same language. That’s causing undue frustration and putting pressure on agencies trying to divine what clients want and need. AI is making that worse.

Bottom line: Find paths to better and more open communication. 

• No black boxes

In the age of principal media, transparency is the key to success, but a lack of it is getting in the way of agency/client trust. Pressure to make money at holdcos is impacting the way media and marketing is unfolding, and it affects all parties. 

Bottom line: Remove black boxes from the equation.

• Who and how do you hire?

AI implementation is altering the day-to-day work of agency staffers. It’s an open field for agencies reimagine what talent means as the industry transforms at the speed of AI. How you staff up is for grabs.

Bottom line: There are no clear answers today how that is accomplished, but experimentation and testing will yield answers.

• Defining outcomes

There are myriad definitions of outcome-based agency solutions, but more clarity around identity and intent will determine where outcomes land in service to client goals.

Bottom line: Get on the same page with clients on determining the definition and purpose of outcomes.