On LinkedIn yesterday, WPP CEO Cindy Rose announced her holding company’s full-throated support of agentic advertising. She wrote:
“Delivering superior business outcomes for our clients with greater precision and speed is our everyday obsession. Today, we’re supercharging that capability with the launch of Agent Hub on our AI marketing platform, WPP Open.
This is so much more than an internal tool; it’s a fundamental shift in how we deliver value to our clients. Agent Hub translates decades of WPP’s world-class expertise, from brand strategy to behavioural science, into powerful AI agents that work alongside our teams to drive better results…”
Read more from Ms. Rose on LinkedIn. (January 5)
According to the WPP press release on the agentic strategy, new agents span planning and creative:
“The Brand Analytics Agent: provides on-demand access to approximately 30 years of WPP’s proprietary Brand Asset Valuator data, the world’s largest and longest-running study of brand equity, to inform brand strategy and creative development.
The Behavioural Science Agent: emulates the thought process of a behavioural scientist, applying proven frameworks from Ogilvy’s award-winning practice to help teams understand human behaviour and motivation more deeply and create truly actionable client strategies.
The Analogies Agent: acting as a strategic muse, this agent finds inspiration and parallel situations from different industries, fostering cross-sectoral thinking and unprecedented innovation to solve complex client challenges.
Creative Brain: a world-class ideation sparring partner, channelling 150 years of WPP creative intelligence for non-obvious connections and lateral leaps.”
And, they’re all “no code tools.”
Read: “WPP launches Agent Hub on WPP Open, providing clients with access to advanced agentic AI marketing expertise” (January 5) – WPP
From tipsheet: Although it’s still early, WPP is choosing “agents” as a key part of its strategy. Signal.
LLMS & CHATBOTS
Developments
- Closing the capability gap between frontier AI and everyday use in 2026 (January 5) – Fidji Simo, CEO of Applications, OpenAI on Substack
- Anthropic’s ‘do more with less’ bet has kept it at the AI frontier, co-founder Amodei says (January 3)- CNBC
- Introducing Alexa[dot]com, a completely new way to interact with Alexa+ (January 5) – Amazon
PLATFORMS
PubMatic orchestrates an AgenticOS
PubMatic is going all-in on agentic advertising.
Yesterday, the sell-side platform (SSP) announced its PubMatic Agentic OS “designed to orchestrate autonomous, agent-to-agent advertising execution.”
According to the company, the new OS strategy brings together its NVIDIA chip infrastructure (October), the agentic capabilities it rolled out in December with agency partner Butler/Till and its buyside-focused Activate platform.
PubMatic is a founding member of the consortium behind Ad Context Protocol (AdCP) and AgenticAdvertising[dot]org.
Notably, WPP Media’s Amanda Grant, EVP, Global Head of Data and Tech Partnerships, provided a quote in PubMatic’s announcement:
“WPP and Choreograph are using agentic AI to strengthen WPP Open and Open Intelligence. Partnering with PubMatic to test AgenticOS underscores our commitment to agile innovation and to advancing what autonomous advertising can deliver at scale.
Read: “PubMatic Launches AgenticOS, the Operating System for Agent-to-Agent Advertising” (January 5) – PubMatic
From tipsheet: Building on WPP CEO Rose’s announcement about Agent Hub on the WPP Open marketing platform, this is the first time I’ve seen “buy-in” from a big agency holding company for a product (PubMatic AgenticOS) connected to AdCP. It would appear to be a hopeful milestone for the fledging protocol which will need to attract significant demand in order to succeed.
SELL-SIDE
Reddit opens AI ‘black box’
As part of its rollout during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), social publishing giant Reddit announced the beta of “Max Campaigns” within Reddit Ads manager. The new product enables automated ad buying across its publisher platform and claims to offer “AI-powered ad performance and unique audience insights.”
What’s notable in Reddit’s marketing of the new product is its use of “opening the black box” which likely stems from a complaint marketers have had about the “black boxes” of Google and Meta’s automated ad buying platforms — Performance Max and Advantage +, respectively. Marketers have said they want more insight on how and why their ad spend is working.
From Reddit yesterday:
“Enabled by Reddit Community Intelligence and AI that predicts the value of every ad impression, Max campaigns optimize campaign settings in real-time to drive better performance with less work. What’s more, where some automated campaigns on other platforms limit performance visibility, Max campaigns do the opposite: unlocking new creative and audience insights only possible with AI and Reddit Community Intelligence. We think of it as opening the black box.”
Read more from Reddit’s announcement. (January 5)
From tipsheet: A few thoughts…
- Once again, industry participants are using “Max” or “+” as a way to align its AI-enabled ad platforms with Google’s and Meta’s products (See Microsoft Performance Max or Pinterest+).
- Also of note here is a publisher, i.e. Reddit, using its own first-party data to create an AI-enabled ad buying and analytics platform.
- Finally, while it’s integrating AI into its own products, Reddit is also selling access to its content to AI crawlers — such as those from OpenAI and Google — which will inform those companies’ LLMs and their chatbots. “You can have your cake and eat it, too?” We’ll see. Still feels like the first inning.
SELL-SIDE
Your media planning is agentic
Identity management and data collaboration platform Optable announced its foray into agentic media planning yesterday with its new AI-enabled Planner Agent product for publishers.
A press release explained:
“Built on open standards including the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Ad Context Protocol (AdCP), Planner Agent represents the first purpose-built agentic tool that works seamlessly across identity, audience, and activation workflows.
Planner Agent reads RFPs, interprets campaign goals, builds audience segments from first-party & third-party data signals, recommends inventory packages, and activates campaigns—all with human-in-the-loop controls that keep publishers in command of their operations.”
Read the release. (January 5)
From tipsheet: Workflow automation continues to be a top application for AI and its agents – in this case, media planning. Companies such as Adsgency (October) and Innovid (November) have also recently plunged into agentic media planning for the buyside.
Related: “The MEDIAOCEANscape: Assembling Best-in-Class Vertical Advertising Software” (January 5) – Bill Wise, CEO, Mediaocean, on LinkedIn
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Podcast: Ads + LLMs will disappoint in 2026
“… my final prediction for 2026 is that people are going to be woefully disappointed with any ad-based businesses that involve LLMs and AI companies. (…) I think that it’s one of those things where the use cases for LLMs are not exactly the same as Google Search. There are some things that you still use Google Search for.
And #2 – Google didn’t have ads on it for a really long time – (…) they conquered a lot of market share [over] five years. And then they integrated with a browser.’
And I just don’t think the same thing for these independent AI companies. I don’t think they have the same vertically integrated things…”
Listen to AdTech AdTalks podcast on the Apple Podcasts app. (January 2)
Related: “OpenAI buys Pinterest and 13 other 2026 predictions by The Information Staff” (January 2) – The Information (subscription)
From tipsheet: Regarding Mr. Glaser’s comment… blaspheme!
Actually, I suspect Mr. Glaser is correct within the timeframe of 2026.
From here, “ads in a chatbot” at scale will take a while to play out. And the way things are going… Google will likely be the first. The company is already testing and learning with “AI Mode” and “AI Overviews.”
Also – how about a chatbot in an ad? It feels like a new format is coming, no?
EVENTS
CES: More AI discussions this week
If you’re at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week, here is an abbreviated list of AI-related discussions that may be of interest:
In “Beyond the Click: A Closer Look at Performance Operations,” participants from Meta and Pinterest, which each have their own AI-enabled ad platforms, discuss performance advertising in the year ahead. Pinterest VP of Programmatic Adtech Sales Chip Jessopp and Simon Whitcombe, Global Business Group VP at Meta, will join Intuit Credit Karma marketer Natasha Madan and Walmart Connect’s Head of General Merchandise, Brett Wein:
- Date: Today, Tuesday, January 6
- Time: 10:00 AM – 10:40 AM
- Location: ARIA, Level 1, Joshua 9
- Details
IAB CEO David Cohen is moderating a discussion titled, “AI at Work: Turning Hype into Hard ROI.” Panelists include E.L.F. Beauty CDO Ekta Chopra, Criteo CEO Michael Komasinski and Typeface marketer Jason Ing:
- Date: Today, Tuesday, January 6
- Time: 3:00 PM – 3:30 PM
- Location: ARIA, Level 1, Joshua 9
- Details
On an Omnicom sponsored panel titled, “From Clicks to Customers: Converting Engagement into Sales,” Omnicom Chief Intelligence Officer Joanna O’Connell brings together Clorox marketer Matt Harker and Amazon Ads VP Paul Kotas on “the full power of creativity, data and AI to connect every element of modern marketing and sales”:
- Date: Today, Tuesday, January 6
- Time: 3:00 PM – 3:40 PM
- Location: ARIA, Level 2, Mariposa 5
- Details
“AI in Overdrive” brings together executives from across the big content and a big ad (and content) platform discuss integrating AI in media and entertainment. Susan Doniz, Disney’s Chief Information and Data Officer joins Google VP, Agency, Kristen O’Hara and Jill Steinhauser, GSVP Platform Monetization and Partnerships, Warner Bros. Discovery:
- Date: Tomorrow, Wednesday, January 7
- Time: 1:30 PM – 2:05 PM
- Location: ARIA, Level 1, Joshua 9
- Details
Also Wednesday, ad platforms Infillion (4:00 pm) and Zefr (4:10 pm) have sponsored presentations focused on AI.
Finally, Integral Ad Science COO Marc Grabowski moderates a discussion for AEO/GEO lovers titled, “Harnessing AI-Powered Search to Grow Your Business.” Among those joining Mr. Grabowski are Nili Klenoff, Mastercard’s EVP of Commerce Media, Khurrum Malik, VP, Business and Product Marketing, Walmart Connect, and former Meta and Instagram ad executive Jim Squires, who is now EVP, Business Marketing and Growth, Reddit:
- Date: Thursday, January 8
- Time: 10:00 AM – 10:40 AM
- Location: ARIA, Level 2, Mariposa 5
- Details
See all AI-related content at CES.
From tipsheet: Regarding the last panel on the list, is Integral Ad Science getting in the answer engine optimization (AEO/GEO) game post-Novacap acquisition?
CREATIVE
‘AI slop’ is all the rage
- H-E-B fans speculate over AI-generated in-store advertisement (January 5) – Chron
- Why Equinox Leaned on AI Slop in Its New Year’s Ad Campaign (January 5) – The Wall Street Journal (subscription)
- Everyone is donating their ‘AI slop’ gifts after Christmas shoppers were duped by deceptive ads (January 5) – New York Post
MORE
- The AI hype cycle is rewriting ad tech’s M&A math (January 5) – Digiday (subscription)
- Marketecture Media Raises Million-Dollar Seed Round from Top Ad Industry Execs (January 5) – Marketecture Media
- Here’s What Amazon Is Telling Advertisers Behind Closed Door (January 4) – Adweek
- Opinion: “Media In 2026: From Managed Decline To Ruthless Independence” (January 5) – Scott Messer on AdExchanger
- Adtech’s year of reinvention: These are the storylines (AI!) that will shape the industry in 2026 (January 5) – Business Insider
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