In 2016, we learned how to brief platforms. In 2026, we’ll have to brief agents.

And most organizations aren’t ready for it.

What is happening isn’t “a little more AI in bidding”. These are autonomous agents that read your business signals, move your budgets and arbitrate your bids. At machine speed. Without you realizing it.

But here’s the real issue: technology is advancing. Governance, not.

→ Who defines what these agents should optimize? Pure performance? Incrementality? Attention? → Which signals are allowed to feed their decisions? → How to audit bidding decisions made in milliseconds?

Standards are emerging to structure all of this. Those who ignore them today will suffer the rules written by others tomorrow.

Marketing decision-makers, three workstreams to start now:

1. From parameter control to objective management. Define what the agent should maximize — and what it does not have the right to sacrifice.
2. Upskill your teams. Planning, creative, media: everyone will have to interact with these systems. A data culture is no longer a ‘nice to have’.
3. Keep a close eye on standards. They are the ones that will define the levers you will be able — or not — to plug into these agents.

The question isn’t whether this will happen. It’s: when it happens, will you be the one at the wheel?

For more information: https://www.emarketer.com/content/genai-will-take-over-programmatic-advertising-2026-agentic-ai-isn-t-far-behind