By Michael Bürgi • August 3, 2026 •
This Media Buying Briefing covers the latest in agency news and media buying for Digiday+ members and is distributed over email every Monday at 10 a.m. ET. More from the series →
Principal media once again finds itself in headlines, at least in Digiday. That’s because it seems the agency holding companies are throwing any and everything they have at it to try to grow that side of the business. Several stories in Digiday last week point to this, and consultants that connect marketers to agencies are hearing and seeing the same.
Part of the reason is that, as holding companies rush to equip themselves with all manner of bristling AI tools and services, they still haven’t quite figured out how to sell them. And meantime, principal media has become a major source of profit margin. Problem, meet solution.
“One of the challenges with the agencies right now is that they don’t know how to price and sell their technology,” said Cyd Falkson, svp of strategic accounts at consultancy MediaSense. “And two, they have not done a good enough job explaining to clients — and then proving the value to clients at scale — from those services.”
