This article is part of a series covering our Programmatic Marketing Summit. More from the series →
AI agents are evolving quickly. In theory, agents are autonomous decision makers — automating campaign creation, optimizing ad buys and drafting pitch decks. In reality, marketers aren’t ready to give up control, establishing guardrails to keep agents in check.
Marketers don’t have a lot of trust when it comes to AI agents in ad buying yet. But that mistrust isn’t unfounded. Hallucinations are reason enough for guardrails, per execs. An incorrect CPM could make or break an ad buy, leaving the agency — instead of the agent — holding the bag.
“Would it blow a quarter’s worth of budget in a weekend? All of that’s well-founded, so that’s a fear,” said Henry Webster, svp director of analytics and insight at Kelly Scott Madison (KSM) Media, who spoke onstage during Digiday’s Programmatic Marketing Summit (DPMS), May 6-8 in Palm Springs, Calif. “The process of taking baby steps, testing, putting stringent guardrails and checks on agents that would operate in that way — makes a ton of sense.”
KSM has an internal agent it calls “the librarian” that acts as a gatekeeper for each client’s brand voice. Other agents can ask it for things like client-specific acronyms and campaign names to be more precise with context or targeting.
