This Ad Tech Briefing covers the latest in ad tech and platforms for Digiday+ members and is distributed over email every Tuesday at 10 a.m. ET. More from the series →During the inaugural annual general meeting for The Agentic Advertising Organization, dubbed The Foundry, last week, attendees debated an awkward talking point for the advertising industry’s AI ambitions.For all the enthusiasm around “agentic” systems, which can plan, optimize, and measure the effectiveness of media campaigns with minimal human intervention, i.e., realize the headcount savings currently wreaking havoc on adland’s workforce, one topic that will thrill accountants less so keeps arising: accountability.
That was the recurring subtext across presentations by executives, academics, former leaders of industry trade bodies, and contemporary practitioners. Namely, if AI agents are increasingly making marketing decisions, who ultimately owns the consequences when those systems fail, bias outcomes, optimize toward the wrong goals, or simply produce mediocre work at scale?
The anxiety was not limited to a handful of directors; the topic was widely debated by the majority of attendees during workshop sessions at the May 6 event. Speakers repeatedly referenced the industry’s tendency to automate flawed processes rather than redesign them, with former IAB U.S. CEO Randall Rothenberg presenting findings that 95% of generative AI pilots fail to deliver measurable profit-and-loss impact, and another forecast that 40% of agentic AI projects will fail by 2027.
