Want AI Agents That Work? You've Gotta Do The 'Unsexy' Stuff First

Most publishers add SSPs like insurance. More partners means more demand and more demand means more competition for every impression. But at The New York Times, every ad tech partner has to earn its place in the stack, says Courtney Glaze, its VP of revenue operations.

Everyone in Adland wants to show off their shiny new AI agent. But you can't do the cool stuff unless you build the data foundation first, says Tinuiti CEO Abbey Klaassen.

Creator marketing and influencer relationships are a top priority for marketers, but both are still behind other digital channels when it to scale, proper reporting and transparency. That's starting to change, though, says Jennifer Quigley-Jones, the founder of Digital Voices and VP of strategy and partnerships at PMG.

In the AI era, according to Tim Frank, the man in charge of AI monetization at Microsoft, "information is the new bid." In other words, the brands that get recommended won't necessarily be the ones with the biggest ad budgets, he says, but rather those with the most clear, complete and transparent product data.

With AI eating everyone's traffic, publishers could use a sympathetic ear. AdTech Therapy's Jana Meron and Scott Messer talk through the sell side's biggest challenges and break down what Google avoiding an ad tech breakup means for media owners.

Creator marketing is the talk of the town, but how do you prove it genuinely drives sales? Emily Steele, co-founder and CEO of creator platform Hummingbirds, breaks it down.

Agentic AI just ran a CTV campaign end-to-end through a new, agent-driven buying workflow with far less manual optimization and a lot less waste. Butler/Till's Scott Ensign explains what that means for the future of programmatic.

Thousands of advertisers are taking Google to arbitration over alleged ad overpayments. Attorney Ashley Keller of Keller Postman explains the legal strategy and what a positive outcome could mean for claimants.

Liquid Death is all jokes and dark humor on the surface, but the canned water brand's chief media and digital commerce officer, Benoit Vatere, takes measurement deadly seriously. He's tackling one of the gnarliest problems in CPG: proving that media actually moves product off the shelves.

Chalice AI's COO and co-founder, Ali Manning, explains how the AI startup – don't call it a custom algorithm company – is helping brands like Bayer use advertiser-specific bidding models to drive real outcomes as opposed to poor proxies.