AI Agents in Retail Media: Why Media Buyers Aren’t Ready for the Agentic Revolution

AI agents are suddenly everywhere in retail media. Platforms, agencies, and retailers are all promising to automate media planning, buying, optimization, and reporting. But how ready are the people actually running these campaigns to hand over the keys?In this episode, a recap of my recent article for The Drum, I dig into new Skai research on “agentic readiness” among paid media practitioners, including why leadership and practitioners appear to have very different views of how ready their organizations really are. I also look at why retail media should theoretically be a perfect environment for agentic buying, the challenges facing mid-market advertisers, and what could happen if every network, agency, and platform launches essentially the same AI agent.This episode is sponsored by GrowthLoopTimeline[01:32] - Breaking down Skai's survey of 332 paid media practitioners and its nine dimensions of agentic readiness[01:47] - Why the average agentic readiness score was just 35.7 out of 100[03:20] - The surprising gap between C-suite confidence and the reality experienced by media-buying practitioners[05:35] - Why retail media should be particularly well suited to AI agents and closed-loop optimization[06:37] - The relationship between advertiser sophistication and adoption of algorithmic media buying[07:06] - How Chewy Ads is approaching the tension between automated buying and sophisticated advertisers[07:51] - Why an “agentic arms race” could leave the industry with lots of announcements — and a very large token billLinks & ResourcesRead my full article on The Drum: Media buyers are nowhere near ready for the agentic revolutionAd management platform Skai surveyed 332 paid media practitioners in April of this year, scoring them across nine dimensions of agentic readinessRead my related articles:ChatGPT Ads Are Here. I'm Not Panicking.AI-Enabled Shopping Hits 74% AdoptionMaybe Ads in AI Don't Have To Suck?Why Chewy's RMN Leader Isn't Gatekeeping First-Party DataCheck out Basket Case, a project I’m part of with The Drum and QSIC, an irreverent and lively podcast series talking shop. The latest episode dropped last weekI'm sharing comedy skits on Instagram about retail media! Follow along: @retailmediabreakfastclubSubscribe to Retail Media Breakfast Club's daily newsletterFollow Kiri Masters on LinkedIn