Institutional investors back startups to unlock outsized returns. Regular investors have to wait. But not anymore. Thanks to regulatory updates, some companies are doing things differently.

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Rio Longacre isn’t your typical “thought leader” peddling AI buzzwords like they’re hot yoga passes. He’s the guy who’s lived through every hype cycle—5G, blockchain, NFTs—and watched more “revolutions” fizzle out than a flat soda. But this time, he’s not hedging. “Non-agentic AI hasn’t moved the needle in a big way yet, but you go to agentic AI… planning agents, bidding agents, content agents that work together? That’s when the 25-year-olds trafficking media are over. Not yet. But it’s coming.”

Translation: the armies of junior media staff copying insertion orders like medieval scribes are standing on the tracks while the hype train barrels toward them—and the conductor isn’t even pretending to look for the brake.

Rio doesn’t sugarcoat it. “Almost everyone on the tech side is already using it. If they’re not, they’re in trouble.”

Engineers have already eloped with AI. They’re shipping product updates in half a day that once took six to eight weeks. Meanwhile, the business side is still using AI like a glorified grammar nanny—rewriting emails, summarizing Zoom calls, and polishing slide titles. If AI were a Ferrari, engineers are driving the Autobahn at 200 mph while marketing is stuck doing laps in the Costco parking lot with the hazards on.

Here’s where Rio gets blunt: “When you have a planning agent versus a bidding agent versus a content agent… they’re going to work together.”

That’s not automation. That’s a new operating system for media.

This isn’t “AI as a tool.” It’s AI as a team—an always-on, caffeine-free staff that never calls in sick and never needs to expense lunch.

Rio nails it: “Spending the budget is the biggest priority… fraud, deltas, millions missing? Most CMOs shrug. It’s FOFO—fear of finding out.”

That’s the truth most won’t say out loud. Many brands don’t want outcomes; they want cover. They want the glossy decks, the stage time, the applause in the south of France. As long as the spend looks busy and nobody asks awkward questions, the fraud keeps cashing checks.

So, buckle—no, scratch that—brace yourself. This is just the overture.

Next up: The Operating Model Autopsy—who gets replaced first, who levels up, and where the bodies are buried.

Rio Longacre didn’t mince words: “At some point those jobs will be over. If this agentic thing actually works—and all indications are looking pretty good—there’s no way brands will keep paying for armies of people just pushing buttons.”

He’s right. The workflows once staffed with dozens of junior traders—tagging campaigns, trafficking creatives, staging workflow approvals—are the first to evaporate. Agentic AI doesn’t just automate; it self-directs, running checks, updating placements, and reallocating spend in real time. One skilled operator can oversee what used to require a floor of cubicles and a sea of double monitors.

AI agents now simulate thousands of pacing and allocation scenarios in minutes. Rio framed it as the inevitable next phase: “A planning agent versus a bidding agent versus a content agent—they’ll work together.” The role of human planners won’t disappear, but it will compress into setting constraints, priorities, and risk parameters. Strategy becomes the human stronghold; execution becomes an agent’s job.

The tedious parts—resizing banners, translating copy, versioning for channels—are already handled by generative platforms. But Rio cautions that creative won’t become fully machine-led: the brand’s tone, cultural sensitivity, and legal compliance remain firmly human. AI accelerates throughput, but humans remain the arbiters of voice and meaning. The creative assembly line thins, but the brand stewards remain indispensable.

“AI can surface causal candidates, but it won’t decide what counts as valid,” Rio said. Agentic platforms already flag patterns in campaign performance and suggest drivers of lift. What’s left is interpretation, governance, and methodology—deciding whether an uptick is a statistical blip or a boardroom insight. The spreadsheet armies are redundant; the scientific arbiters survive.

The economic model agencies have lived on—time and materials, billable hours, headcount multipliers—simply doesn’t survive a 10× leap in throughput. If one operator armed with an agentic stack replaces ten staffers, billing by labor inputs becomes fiction.

The models that survive shift toward:

The rhetoric of “full-time equivalents” gives way to metrics that reflect value, not hours.

Rio shared a pharma case that illustrates the pivot: “They had more than 200 FTEs at a hold co executing media. No way that survives. The brand’s already looking to in-house and they’ll use AI because they’re not going to hire hundreds of people again.”

This is the blueprint: leaner in-house ops teams leveraging AI stacks for planning, trafficking, and reporting. Agencies no longer handle every click—they become specialized partners for arbitration, strategic guidance, and publisher leverage.

The old argument against in-housing was always scale: “We’d need 200 people to push buttons.” That’s dead. With AI, scale is no longer human—it’s computational. Brands bring work inside not because they want to, but because they can.

The agency that survives becomes less execution engine and more adjudication layer.

Rio’s line sums it up: “Agencies aren’t going anywhere—they’ll survive, like cockroaches. But they’ll look different.” The lesson: survival depends on shedding labor-rental economics and trading it for trust, oversight, and human-to-human influence.

Next: the platform knife fight—agentic AI versus the legacy SaaS stack, verification layers, ID brokers, and curation middle-men.

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Hook: Everyone loves to brag about their SaaS “moats.” But those walls aren’t keeping invaders out—they’re barely holding back the flood.

The SaaS “moats” in advertising look less like castles and more like retirement condos in hurricane season—sandbags stacked, water rushing in.

Agentic AI is that surge. It doesn’t wait for permission.

Rio Longacre put it bluntly: Non-agentic AI hasn’t moved the needle. But agentic AI—agents planning, bidding, creating, reconciling—changes the model. SaaS dashboards? Either cannibalize your tax or get cannibalized.

Translation: If you’re still hawking dashboards and after-the-fact reports, you’re Blockbuster clinging to late fees while Netflix flips the streaming switch.

👉 [Read the full article in ADOTAT+]

Hook: Everyone’s chasing CTV like it’s a golden goose. Problem is, half the eggs are plastic.

The connected-TV market has ballooned into a $30–40 billion annual playground, but it’s still a tale of two realities:

Rio Longacre cut through the noise: Legit CTV performs; garbage CTV is where fraud lives. And it’s not going away.

The next defense line? Agentic platforms trained to prioritize inventory provenance and creative fit. They’ll funnel spend into premium environments, away from MFA honey traps. But that only works if brands treat CTV as a forensic audit, not a vanity channel.

👉 [Read the full article in ADOTAT+]

Hook: The industry doesn’t have a fraud problem—it has a spine problem.

Fraud doesn’t persist because people are clueless. It persists because the incentives are built for willful blindness.

The unwritten rule of digital ads? “Spend and smile.” Procurement loves neat dashboards, CMOs love Cannes selfies, agencies love invoices that don’t trigger hard questions.

Agentic AI can flip this—forcing budget-before-benefit proofs into every campaign. But it only works if contracts and comp structures grow real teeth.

👉 [Read the full article only on ADOTAT+]