Juliette Stead.
Juliette Stead, SVP, Head of JAPAC, Magnite
While much of the industry conversation has focused on how AI might reshape roles, workflows and decision-making, its greatest near-term impact will come from augmenting the way teams already work. As AI becomes more deeply embedded across the advertising ecosystem, it will help reduce friction across parts of the campaign workflow, enabling teams to move more effectively from brief to strategy, creative execution, activation, optimisation and measurement.
This is increasingly important in streaming, where the ecosystem is evolving to create new opportunities for advertisers to reach engaged audiences in premium environments. However, the proliferation of content types, formats, and viewing experiences adds a layer of complexity. Buyers must identify the right audiences, formats, and environments best suited to their objectives and activate them efficiently, while media owners face new challenges around maximising the value of this increasingly diverse mix of content.
This is where AI has the potential to make a meaningful impact. AI agents are emerging as a new interface for buyers and publishers that can help translate campaign objectives into actionable recommendations and optimise monetisation across this growing range of content types and demand sources. As agentic workflows continue to evolve, they will increasingly enable participants on both sides of the transaction to respond more quickly to changing conditions and improve decision-making while preserving the controls and transparency that underpin premium media.
However, AI is only as effective as the infrastructure, data and expertise that support it. Brand suitability, publisher controls, pricing, deal structures, live inventory dynamics, compliance, optimisation and accountability all require human expertise and trusted infrastructure that underpins AI models and tools.
AI can make premium inventory easier to discover, access, and monetise
The near-term opportunity for AI is to make buying and selling easier, smarter, and more streamlined. Testing is already underway that shows AI-enabled tools can help surface relevant audiences, packages and opportunities more efficiently, while allowing advertisers to apply the judgement needed to refine plans and deliver campaigns effectively.
In this sense, AI has the potential to become a powerful force multiplier for media buying. AI can streamline the path from intent to action and help buyers navigate increasingly complex environments more quickly and with greater confidence. It can also enable publishers to respond more effectively to changing demand patterns and evolving buying behaviours while ensuring they are in full control of their assets. AI is not a replacement for strategy itself. Teams still need to set the direction, evaluate recommendations and ensure campaigns align with brand, business and performance goals.
AI can help simplify complexity by making opportunities easier to understand, access, and activate. However, the quality of the outcome still depends on the strategy and human expertise guiding those decisions and determining whether the right choices are being made.
AI and programmatic are stronger together, particularly in live environments
Agentic AI and programmatic should not be treated as competing models. While programmatic provides the infrastructure, scale and access to premium inventory, AI can improve how activity is managed within that framework. It can help optimise bidding, pacing and budget allocation, process large volumes of contextual and performance signals, and adapt as audience behaviour shifts throughout a campaign.
These capabilities are particularly valuable in dynamic environments such as live sporting events, where audience behaviour can shift rapidly and advertisers need to react in real time. A surge in viewership during a major sporting event may create additional opportunities to reach consumers, but the real challenge is understanding where those audiences are, how they can be reached, and which opportunities are most likely to drive results.
AI can help buyers process those signals more quickly, identify relevant opportunities, and make more informed optimisation decisions as campaigns unfold. But its effectiveness still depends on the fundamentals that make premium streaming buying work effectively: inventory access, planning, delivery controls, measurement, trusted relationships and the ability for teams to respond operationally in real time. A prompt can express intent, but it cannot guarantee execution.
AI can expand access to streaming by reducing creative and operational barriers
AI can also make streaming more accessible to advertisers that have not traditionally invested in the channel. For smaller advertisers in particular, the challenge is often not lack of interest, but the time, cost, and expertise required to create suitable assets, understand buying options and activate campaigns effectively.
This is where AI-powered experiences can help expand opportunities that may have been previously out of reach. Rather than expecting every advertiser to learn a new platform or workflow, AI can simplify the process by translating business objectives into campaign recommendations, surfacing relevant audience and inventory opportunities, and guiding advertisers through activation.
Creative is an important part of this and an area where AI can help accelerate adoption to make it easier for businesses that have historically relied on search, social, or local digital advertising to expand into streaming environments. From asset creation and adaptation to campaign setup and optimisation, AI can help advertisers move from idea to execution more quickly. The opportunity is not just to make existing advertisers more efficient, but to open up new demand by reducing friction, while still maintaining the quality, controls and oversight that premium streaming requires.
The question is no longer whether AI will transform transaction workflows, but where it can create the most value. The opportunity lies in leveraging AI to remove friction, improve decision-making and help teams act with greater speed and confidence, without losing the strategy, standards and accountability that make premium media valuable in the first place. The key differentiator lies in treating AI as the connective tissue that helps buyers and publishers move further and faster, while preserving the transparency, control and expertise that are key to a healthy advertising ecosystem.