June Cheung.
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June Cheung, Head of JAPAC at Scope3
In just a few years, today’s dashboards, DSP toggles and waterfall optimisations will feel as outdated as dial-up. What once passed for cutting-edge media buying will seem bloated, inefficient and increasingly difficult to justify.
Digital advertising is entering its most significant shift since the arrival of real-time bidding. A new model, powered by agentic AI, is beginning to take shape. This evolution of media buying introduces intelligent systems that make decisions based on context, brand values and measurable outcomes. Crucially, these systems cut through the noise and complexity that has defined programmatic for over a decade. They act with purpose, offer transparency to all participants in the ecosystem, and align clearly to business results.
What’s most exciting is that this shift is about more than just smarter technology. It reflects a fundamental rethinking of how we approach performance, accountability and trust in digital media. Long-standing assumptions — that more impressions mean more value, that more data leads to better targeting, that more platforms equals better optimisation — are collapsing under the weight of their own inefficiency.
Inadvertently or not, digital advertising turned consumers into products. It rewarded scale over quality and allowed low-value content and fraud to flourish. At the same time, it placed an enormous operational burden on advertisers, who were left managing fragmented supply chains across layers of platforms.
Agentic advertising offers a better way forward. It enables brands to plan and buy media based on content quality and alignment with business goals, all without relying on invasive tracking or complex tech stacks. Instead of chasing consumers, agents select the most relevant inventory for the message. Instead of optimising through endless toggles, they make decisions that reflect what the brand actually wants to achieve.
Early testing of this is already happening. Brands experimenting with these models have seen meaningful results. Publishers are reclaiming value as quality reclaims its place in the ecosystem. And media teams are evolving, moving away from mechanical execution toward strategic oversight.
While a sweeping shift won’t happen overnight, momentum is growing. New protocols like AdCP are already showing what’s possible when the industry comes together to build for the future, rather than simply putting a band aid over the problems of the current infrastructure.
As AI becomes deeply embedded in how we experience the internet, it also offers a rare opportunity to reset. The goal now is not to rebuild a system that reflects the way people engage with content, the way brands want to be seen, and the value publishers work hard to create.
Soon, we’ll look back and wonder why we tolerated so much waste and complexity for so long. Media buying will look entirely different in the years ahead, and when it does we’ll wonder how we ever worked any other way.
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