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Dive Brief:

• Warner Bros. Discovery is upgrading its ad-tech stack with expanded agentic artificial intelligence capabilities supported by cloud-computing partner Amazon Web Services, per a press release shared with Marketing Dive.
• Traditional, siloed internal workflows will shift to what the HBO Max owner bills as a more automated and data-powered approach. AI agents will be used for media planning, dynamic forecasting, real-time campaign optimization and closed-loop measurement.  
• Streamlining the ad-buying experience into a unified AI platform that covers both linear TV and digital aims to help advertisers better deploy their spend across WBD’s properties and more easily tap into different, newer ad formats.

Dive Insight:

WBD made agentic AI a key piece of its upfront pitch to advertisers and agencies last month and is now providing a clearer view into its plans to automate more significant aspects of the ad-buying process. The news arrives amid a flurry of agentic ad-buying announcements ahead of next week’s Cannes Lions conference, a major gathering for advertisers where AI is expected to be a focus of discussion.  

It’s still too early to tell the full extent to which agentic AI will meaningfully reshape advertising, but platforms and publishers are racing to embrace solutions to appear on the leading edge of a critical front in tech. Broadcaster Fox earlier this week claimed to launch the first end-to-end agentic platform for advertising, an offering supported by partners including WPP, Horizon Media and Comcast’s Universal Ads. 

WBD’s agentic pivot is positioned as a way to make things easier for advertisers, bringing linear and digital buys together under one roof while providing greater flexibility in how campaigns are planned, targeted and measured. AI agents can “continuously self-optimize,” the release said, meaning they will — at least in theory — be able to learn over time and ultimately deliver better outcomes. WBD has previously assured advertisers that humans will still be in charge of important decision-making and argues that better experiences on the back end benefit viewers who can be served more personalized, contextually relevant ads.  

WBD has been rolling out more agentic capabilities this year, including in direct response advertising, commercial workflows, advanced audience forecasting and measurement and attribution. In Q3, the company plans to introduce its unified media planning tool and, following that, composable order management, pricing and stewardship features underpinned by AI.

One key advantage for WBD could be its AWS partnership, which is deepening in support for the agentic ad-tech overhaul. WBD is drawing on services including Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Quick to ensure its AI bets can realize the promised degree of sophistication and maintain data protection and security. 

WBD’s advertising business dipped 7% year over year on a reported basis to $1.85 billion in Q1, a softness attributed to linear declines and a lack of programming around the NBA. Looming over WBD is its planned mega-merger with rival studio Paramount, which recently received approval to move forward from the Justice Department. The closure of that deal will likely mean more changes to come for how WBD handles ads.