Unharnessed

Unharnessed and ADSN join forces for a panel on how AI agents like Meta’s Muse could change shopping, advertising, software, and the open web.The panelists start with what’s easier now. AI coding tools have lowered the barrier to building almost to the ground, but agents still struggle with ideas, product quality, security, and distribution. They then get practical. They describe using Muse as a personal assistant for scheduling, anniversary planning, marketplace searches, and even researching and ordering a surfboard.From there they take on the harder questions:If agents do the browsing, what happens to ad impressions and publisher economics?Will big platforms with enough demand simply lock agents out?Could agents become the new interface for buying ads, and what does that mean for clunky tools like Meta’s Business Suite and Ads Manager?How do you keep the open web alive, handle ad verification, and avoid new walled gardens?Is the convenience worth giving up the fun of browsing and making the final purchase choice yourself?They close with what they’d build next: connecting TV ads to agent-enabled checkout, hardware projects, and an agent-powered family calendar that gives time back.

In this episode of Unharnessed, Mo and Joe sit down with Jules Minvielle, founder and CEO of Olyzon, the Paris-born, New York-based startup building an agentic orchestration layer for media buying. They start with the name (a play on the Tupac song “All Eyes on Me”) and the French ad tech scene. Then they get into what it takes to run campaigns through AI agents.Olyzon began with show-level scoring for CTV and now connects agents to 35+ platforms. These include The Trade Desk, Amazon DSP, DV360, Spotify, YouTube, and direct publishers like Universal Ads. Jules says agents cut setup time by more than 80% and let traders optimize about five times more often. They also take over the email-and-attachment IO work that eats 10+ hours a week.The conversation covers:Why agencies are building their own agents, and why Olyzon’s harness plugs into them instead of replacing themHow email-driven trafficking works without needing access to a trader’s full inboxHow agents could reshape the ad tech chain, and why Jules is agnostic: the winner is whatever saves the most money for the least friction, and DSPs and SSPs still carry real valueWhy AdCP and agent-to-agent buying are interesting but not yet at scale, with the volume still in programmatic and direct IOWhether walled gardens will block third-party agents, and why Jules sees a clear move toward headless DSPs and open APIs

In this episode of Unharnessed, Jonathan Moffie and Joe Hirsch welcome their first international guest, Jason Spencer, Business Development Director at ITV, the UK broadcaster, streamer, and producer behind Love Island.Jason explains how ITV went from experimenting with Gen AI to producing TV ads for small and medium-sized businesses that once cost six figures and took weeks. His team now makes them in about a minute, at no cost to the advertiser. He covers:Why ITV's early enterprise-license approach couldn't scale, and what changed with an "AI DJ" approach that picks the right tool for each jobHow ITV built the UK's BCAP advertising code into the platform, and why the Clearcast approval process is "healthy friction"Why ITV chose a concierge model over a self-serve platform, since a busy business owner gets one chance to impressHow pause ads became the easiest on-ramp for first-time TV advertisers, with repeat customers like Salisbury RacecourseHow UK broadcasters are collaborating on Lantern, a shared outcomes measurement platform, and on an SME marketplaceWhat's next: turning social video into YouTube campaigns, and making 50 ads at once for 50 locations

Everyone can build an agent. What makes one worth using? PMG’s Mike Treon joins Jonathan Moffie and Joseph Hirsch to unpack how an agency turns its data, workflows, and best media operators’ expertise into an agentic advantage. They explore why automated transactions are only the starting point, what adtech platforms need to offer beyond API wrappers, and how agents can improve planning, troubleshoot deals, and flag campaign changes before a human notices.

Six months ago, Eric Franchi's inbox started filling with a new kind of startup: companies building an agentic layer on top of every API and MCP server an advertiser can reach. Walled gardens, search, open web, ChatGPT, even DSPs. A couple turned into a dozen, then more than 25. Eric and his partner Corey gave the category a name: the Unified Media Platform, or UMP.Moffie and Joe dig into whether UMPs create net-new spend or just redistribute existing budgets, and why platform risk is the bear case. Eric also explains why the smartest exits may come from acquirers nobody sees coming, as Pinterest's acquisition of TV Scientific showed. Plus: the AI tools a VC actually uses every day, why ChatGPT ads favor the big players for now, and Eric's three-layer map of the most investable agentic categories for 2027.Disclosure: Eric's fund is an investor in Swivel, where Joe is founder and CEO.

You ship the product. Launch day comes. Your dashboard is 0 across the board. Every founder has felt that. Mike Khristo has felt it enough times to build a company about it. Layers is an agent that reads your repo, makes the content, buys the ads, and traces every install back to what caused it.On episode 3 of Unharnessed, we go deep with Mike on:• Using agents for customer acquisition, including buying inside ChatGPT• The alpha you get as a founder 💩 posting on X• The rise of AI assistants like Muse and Instinct, and what makes this crop actually useful• Joe gets free marketing advice for his vintage Native American jewelry side hustleUnharnessed is hosted by Jonathan Moffie and Joe Hirsch.

Nobody wants a team of 30 sub-agents. They want their problem solved. Adam Epstein, co-founder of Gigi (a buyer agent for the Amazon DSP) joins Moffie and Joe Hirsch to make the case that your agent architecture is your business, not your product, and shipping it to the customer is the same mistake as shipping your org chart.

TIME started serving ads to AI agents. Perplexity blocked them and called it deceptive. OpenAds.ai co-founder and CEO Steven Liss joins Moffie (Magnite) and Joe Hirsch (Swivel) to ask whether a market for ads-for-agents survives the model providers — who controls agent traffic, where the leverage actually sits, and what this looks like 18 months out.