The Pub Report’s Trends, Tools, and Takeaways: The Future of Programmatic is Agentic

Publishers are navigating a complex programmatic landscape across fragmented deal-making, AI disruption, and the continued pressure of walled gardens. Last month, Optable's VP of Product, Andy Sharkey, joined a lineup of industry leaders on The Pub Report’s latest webinar to dig into these challenges and what's actually being done about them.

Here's what stood out.

The Big Picture: No One Wins Alone

The through-line across every session was the importance of collaboration.

That spirit set the tone for a conversation that was less about abstract AI hype and more about practical applications that fit into the workflows publishers and buyers already rely on today.

"There's no better time than right now to be collaborating and coming together and talking about these key topics. No one is going to succeed on their own." — Rob Beeler, Beeler.Tech

Practical Applications of Agentic Advertising With Optable’s Andy Sharkey

Kicking things off, Andy made a compelling case for how agentic AI can ease one of programmatic's most persistent pain points: the operational burden of managing PMP and curated deals at scale.

As PMP and curated deals have become increasingly central to publisher revenue strategies, Ad Ops teams are feeling the pressure. Campaign planning is traditionally manual, slow, and fragmented. The process can't sustainably keep pace with demand.

One solution? A Sales Agent built to slot into the existing programmatic ecosystem without replacing the core workflows.

Andy demoed an example of this in practice using Claude, connected to Optable. Here’s how it can work:

1. A buyer drops a campaign brief directly into the agent.
2. The agent reads the brief, identifies relevant deal packages (for example: CTV and video inventory targeting specific demographics across web and mobile) and surfaces available options automatically.
3. Once the buyer activates a deal, the agent finds the preferred SSP, generates a new deal ID, injects it into the SSP, and shares it with the buyer to load into their DSP.

The best part? It’s not science fiction. As Andy put it: "We're not talking about a complete revolution with AI. Publishers are going to continue with their SSPs and DSPs and partners for the foreseeable future. This is a technology layer we can introduce to help automate the creation of PMPs and curated deals."

On the publisher side, the agent gives teams control over how their inventory is represented, allowing them to define audience packages, set pricing, toggle on discovery for specific demographics, and manage authorized buyers. It's designed to be SSP-agnostic with potential for connectivity across the ecosystem.

Andy's takeaway for publishers was direct: make sure you're working with technology that gives you strong identity, contextual, and audience signals, and that your audience agent is compatible with the AdCP Signals Protocol.

Want to learn more about the emerging agentic advertising era and what it means for publishers? Download our guide here.

The Wider Conversation

Brian O'Kelley (Scope3) tackled the challenge of competing with walled gardens, which continue to attract advertisers because buying on them is often easier than navigating the open web. His vision leans into AI as a way to unlock new demand sources that include and go beyond traditional display while staying fully compatible with the programmatic infrastructure.

Dr. Paul Farrow (Microsoft) raised some of the most thought-provoking questions of the day around content monetization in the age of AI. When users get answers directly from LLMs without ever landing on a publisher's page, the traditional revenue flywheel starts to break. His proposal: the industry needs a systematic, marketplace-based solution to regain equilibrium for publishers of all sizes across the open web.

Scott Siegler (Amazon Publisher Services) rounded things out with a look at how the APS Prebid Adapter is helping under-resourced publishers access demand at scale, reducing the technology fragmentation and cost of ownership that hold smaller players back.

What This Means for Publishers

The tools to improve programmatic advertising are rapidly developing and evolving. The publishers who will benefit most are the ones actively working with the right technology partners to build the identity, audience, and contextual infrastructure that agentic workflows will depend on. We're proud that Optable's work is part of that conversation.

Ready to explore how agentic solutions can put your audience data to work and simplify your workflows? Book a demo today.