Yesterday (12 February), pubX Founder & CEO Andrew Mole joined Tom Triscari on the Quo Vadis Show for a live conversation on agentic advertising – and why this shift matters far more than another platform upgrade.

The headline is this:
Agentic advertising isn’t “a better DSP” or “a better UI”. It’s a structural change in how information is processed, decisions are made, and value is captured in programmatic.

For publishers, that distinction is everything. Over the last decade, a lot of innovation has helped the ecosystem run faster – but not necessarily fairer. Agentic changes the direction of travel: it creates the conditions for publishers to turn intelligence into pricing power, not just operational efficiency.

From efficiency to leverage

In the webinar, Andrew was clear: agentic isn’t about doing the same workflows a bit quicker, it’s about changing the operating model. When systems can evaluate, package and optimise continuously, you move from periodic decision-making to always-on execution.

That matters because programmatic is still shaped by “manual scale” in the places that count – what gets packaged, what gets prioritised, what gets monitored, and what gets optimised. Even great teams hit a limit. Agentic breaks that limit.

Why publishers should care

The publisher upside isn’t “automation for its own sake.” It’s what automation unlocks when intelligence can operate at machine scale:

• Better outcomes with less wastage, because optimisation is continuous rather than occasional
• Fairer value capture, because real audience signals can be recognised and priced properly
• A long-tail opportunity, because smaller, high-quality audiences don’t need to “manufacture scale” to be valued

In short: intelligence stops being something publishers use internally and becomes something the market can price.

Don’t treat agentic advertising as an “efficiency trend.” Treat it as a value-chain shift – and a rare chance for publishers to turn intelligence into pricing power.

You can watch the full webinar here.