Episode 73: Pubmatic isn’t messing around with Agentic Ads

Andrew Woods, GC of SSP Pubmatic, joins Alan Chapell to discuss Pubmatic’s approach to agentic ads — and how AI has irrevocably changed the legal profession. Pubmatic’s recent agentic test campaign results were a hit at Marketecture Live, and Andrew goes deep into what he believes will need to happen in order for agentic to live up to its promise. The Chapell Regulatory Insider is available at https://chapellreport.substack.com/.  Takeaways Agentic AI does not create new liability; it accelerates existing frameworks Accountability sits with whoever deploys the agent Logging and decision provenance will be critical for compliance Privacy compliance is less about difficulty, more about fragmentation Hope is not a plan when it comes to regulatory scrutiny Data minimization is becoming a real engineering constraint AI will eliminate routine legal work but elevate strategic problem-solving Agentic systems can become powerful compliance tools if built correctly Chapters 00:10 Introduction to the episode and Andrew Woods 02:01 Andrew’s background and journey into ad tech 04:20 Lessons from Twitter on privacy and user safety 06:29 What a General Counsel does in modern ad tech 08:43 Biggest lesson from global privacy enforcement 11:04 Building trust between legal and business teams 13:21 Who is liable in agentic AI advertising 16:29 Why logging and data provenance matter 18:27 The role of compliance signals and guardrails 20:57 Why agentic compliance frameworks are not built yet 22:57 Regulation versus fragmentation challenges 24:55 How PubMatic approaches privacy by design 27:10 Data minimization in practice 28:16 Non-negotiables for agentic compliance frameworks 31:57 Where industry discussions are happening 33:50 The future of agentic AI in advertising 36:42 How PubMatic’s legal team uses AI today 40:26 Why traditional legal work is disappearing 45:09 Final thoughts and closing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices