Agents are now buying media. Most publishers aren't ready to sell to them

Digiday and Optable surveyed 180 publishers, advertisers, agencies, and retailers on how they actually use agentic advertising today, from investment and readiness to barriers and impact. The gap between who's buying and who's ready is wider than the headlines suggest.

What you'll learn

• The industry view. How ready the market really is, where investment is flowing, and the areas like governance that are getting left behind.
• Publishers. Why sell-side investment is slow, the tech and readiness barriers behind it, and why publishers want higher yield and demand from agentic over cost savings.
• Advertisers. How the buy side is using agentic AI, the governance and control concerns limiting scale, and where advertisers already see results and plan to spend more.
• Agencies. Why agencies lead adoption, the role they see for themselves in an agent-driven ecosystem, and the workflows they expect to benefit most.
• The outlook. What practitioners believe will determine whether agentic advertising scales, and where open protocols like AdCP and MCP fit in.

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