
As AI adoption accelerates in advertising, so does the need for underlying infrastructure that can act intelligently, align with regulations, and uphold brand integrity. That’s where Ebiquity Group CEO Ruben Schreurs sees an opportunity for transformation.

In this Q&A, Ruben breaks down what agentic AI really means, why now is the time to act, and how Ebiquity’s new ERA Curriculum and pre-flight agent are reshaping the industry’s approach to responsible media.

**Q: You’ve described agentic AI as a major shift in how decisions will get made across the advertising ecosystem. What excites you most about this moment? How do you define agentic AI in your own words?**

**Ruben:** I don’t think there’s a binary definition for ‘agentic AI.’ It’s not that AI is either fully agentic or not. We’re seeing applications become more agentic over time, meaning they’re gaining more agency. They can make decisions more autonomously, execute multi-step tasks, and learn from what they encounter during those tasks to improve performance.

But that autonomy also introduces risk.

The more independently systems act, the harder it is to predict their behavior. So we need clear instructions, strong guardrails, and the ability to intervene when needed. That’s what makes this moment so important: we can unlock huge gains in efficiency and effectiveness, but we have to do it responsibly.

**Q: You introduced the concept of “instrumental convergence” and warned that hope isn’t a strategy. Why is it so important to build in guardrails at this stage of AI adoption?**

**Ruben:** Instrumental convergence is the idea that an autonomous system given a certain goal might, in pursuit of that goal, enact harmful or unintended consequences if not properly guided. The paperclip maximizer essay is the classic example: an AI tasked with making as many paperclips as possible ends up consuming all the world’s resources.

In advertising, that might mean an AI optimizing for clicks by running ads in harmful or misleading environments. If the instruction is just "maximize clicks," and we don’t set constraints, we’re going to see real consequences. That’s why regulation, policy, and brand values all have to be embedded into the systems from the start.

**Q: What is the Effective & Responsible Advertising (ERA) Curriculum, and what gap does it fill for the brands and agencies you work with?**

**Ruben:** The [ERA curriculum](https://ebiquity.com/news-insights/press/ebiquity-announces-pioneering-ai-solutions-and-expands-strategic-partnership-with-scope3/) is a training or operating manual for AI applications. It’s hosted by Ebiquity, designed for brands, and can be used with any platform or partner, though it’s natively integrated into the Scope3 Agentic Media Platform.

Think of it like this: if you prompt ChatGPT to generate a media plan, ERA gives the AI the additional instructions it needs to comply with regulations and brand policies. That might mean avoiding certain content types, respecting local advertising restrictions, or applying a brand’s internal standards.

We maintain the ERA Curriculum in a format we call .AIRF — AI-Readable Format — which minimizes compute requirements and ensures the guidance is clear, non-conflicting, and actionable. It allows advertisers to control how AI acts on their behalf, and to do it in a way that’s scalable, consistent, and sustainable.

**Q: You’ve also previewed a new pre-flight check agent launching later this year. How does this shift the industry from reactive auditing to proactive planning?**

**Ruben:** Historically, we primarily worked downstream. A campaign would run, and afterward we would review the investments to flag compliance issues or inefficiencies. But that doesn’t let you fix anything retroactively.

The pre-flight check agent changes that. When a media plan is created, brands and their agencies can run it through the agent, which will flag anything that doesn’t align with the ERA Curriculum — whether it’s regulatory, brand-related, or effectiveness related. Think of it like the pre-flight inspection on an airplane: it doesn’t catch everything, but it dramatically reduces risk before takeoff.

This also reduces the need for manual reviews and back-and-forth. It fits the speed and scale of modern planning cycles, and it gives advertisers a way to act responsibly from the very start.

**Q: You’ve integrated ERA directly into the Scope3 Agentic Media Platform from day one — what made Scope3 the right partner for this launch?**

**Ruben:** We’ve been a partner of Scope3 since the beginning. What brought us together is a shared belief that effective advertising and responsible advertising are not mutually exclusive. In fact, when you optimize for sustainability, you often improve performance as well.

As Scope3 expanded into agentic infrastructure with Brand Standards and the Agentic Media Platform, we saw a natural alignment. They’re focused on shortening the supply chain, improving transparency, and making the media ecosystem more effective and accountable. That aligns perfectly with what we do at Ebiquity.

Together, we’re giving advertisers the tools they need to act responsibly *and* grow their business — that’s the future we’re building.

**Q: The ERA curriculum is live, the pre-flight agent is on the way, and AI is only accelerating. What’s next for Ebiquity and the industry?**

**Ruben:** Advertising is a trillion-dollar global industry since this year, and it’s time to start operating like one. Too much waste, too much inefficiency, and too many avoidable risks exist in the system today. We need to mature. That means embracing AI, but doing so with purpose and responsibility built in.

At Ebiquity, we’re focused on turning these tools into real-world results. Not promises or pilots, but actual deployment. Scope3 shares that mindset, which is why the partnership works so well. We want to help this industry move forward in a way that delivers outcomes and earns trust. That’s what effective and responsible advertising really looks like.

As AI adoption accelerates in advertising, so does the need for underlying infrastructure that can act intelligently, align with regulations, and uphold brand integrity. That’s where Ebiquity Group CEO Ruben Schreurs sees an opportunity for transformation.

Building a more responsible ad ecosystem: Q&A with Ebiquity’s Ruben Schreurs


In advertising, tradeoffs have always been part of the equation.

Buyers constantly navigate the tension between price, quality, and scale — forced to prioritize one set of KPIs at the expense of others. The problem isn’t that these tradeoffs exist. The problem is that advertisers have had little insight into how these pieces interrelate, with even less control over how key trade-off decisions are made across the digital supply chain.

That’s no longer the case.

Through a first-of-its-kind partnership with Index Exchange, Scope3 has deployed agentic infrastructure upstream in the programmatic supply chain. This integration enables AI-powered agents to evaluate every impression prior to programmatic auction, weighing price, quality, and scale in real time to decide whether that impression should be included in a high-quality, brand-aligned deal.

All of this happens within a 10-millisecond window, unlocking significant benefits for media buyers that were previously difficult to capture, such as: 

- **Speed and scale:** The entire pipe of supply is available for real-time agentic decisioning, allowing SSPs, DSPs, and brands to optimize toward shared outcomes.
- **Integrity:** Signals coming directly from publishers represent the purest, highest-fidelity signal in the supply chain, eliminating spoofing, duplication, and signal degradation.
- **Efficiency:** Instead of having multiple DSPs evaluate the same impression hundreds of times, the decision is made once and propagated everywhere.
- **Control:** Brands and platforms can transact on their preferred balance between price, quality, and reach in real time.

For advertisers and their partners, this evolution marks a fundamental shift.

Instead of relying on static inclusion lists, pre-filtered PMPs, or opaque third-party scoring systems, brands and their agencies can now train intelligent agents to execute decisions against their exact standards at scale.

## **What does that look like in practice?**

As an illustrative example, a brand that prioritizes sustainability can configure its agent to reject any inventory sources above a certain emissions threshold, even if they’re cheaper or offer broader reach. They might even add on additional specifications for media quality (such as avoids MFA) or bespoke brand standards, to avoid any inventory not aligned with their suitability preferences.  

By having the agent pre-decision impression opportunities based on these parameters, the brand will only bid on and activate media aligned to its' standards, while cutting down on waste driven by climate-risk properties or by supply chain QPS that is unproductive or irrelevant.

And this has benefits for the entirety of the digital supply chain, too. By applying agentic intelligence and brand-specific parameters closer to the origin impression, ad tech platforms can optimize the efficiency of their supply chain by auctioning (or bidding on) more performant and relevant impression opportunities – ones aligned with exactly what buyers are looking for. 

This level of customization hasn’t existed before, and it’s especially powerful because the decision is made prior to the auction being sent.

## **Why does that matter?**

It gives advertisers a way to shape the supply of media, not just react to what’s available.

By flipping the decision-making upstream, agents can optimize for multiple variables simultaneously and eliminate the noise before it reaches the buyer. That means less waste, fewer irrelevant impressions, and a clearer path to outcomes that align with the brand’s values and goals.

For years, programmatic has been defined by its complexity. This infrastructure is designed to restore clarity and control to the advertiser, and help align and optimize performance across the supply chain. 

Advertisers shouldn’t have to choose between scale and standards. They should be able to define exactly what the right balance looks like for their business — and trust that every impression reflects that decision.

That’s what the Agentic Media Platform is designed to do. And thanks to our work with Index Exchange, it’s now possible.

If you’re ready to take control of how your brand buys media, this is the new starting point.

Buyers constantly navigate the tension between price, quality, and scale — forced to prioritize one set of KPIs at the expense of others. The problem isn’t that these tradeoffs exist. The problem is that advertisers have had little insight into how these pieces interrelate, with even less control over how key trade-off decisions are made across the digital supply chain.  That’s no longer the case.

Upstream Intelligence: How agentic AI optimizes for price, quality, and scale in programmatic


Agentic advertising introduces AI-driven agents into the ad ecosystem. 

These agents are capable of making real-time decisions on behalf of advertisers, agencies, DSPs, SSPs, or publishers based on highly complex inputs and data computation. AI agents can optimize bidding, negotiate deals, and enforce media quality criteria, solving for signal loss and media quality while driving better marketing outcomes.

## **How does agentic advertising drive better outcomes and improve media effectiveness?**

Agentic advertising introduces an AI-driven infrastructure that enables advertisers to make more intelligent decisions. Agents give marketers full control over what they buy, and allow them to tailor media to the intended outcome of a campaign. As a result, they improve media effectiveness and marketing outcomes.

Agents can factor in performance metrics, brand safety, viewability, and sustainability goals (e.g., carbon emissions), and actively negotiate for inventory that meets these standards. Plus, they learn in real time, ensuring continuous alignment with evolving quality criteria.

One key benefit of this intelligent decision-making is that it solves for signal loss—an issue that has long distorted media quality.

Media quality is an umbrella term that evaluates inventory based on a number of signals, including sustainability, viewability, and MFA, as well as more pernicious media like fraud and illegal content. Buyers want to know that they’re purchasing high-quality media, but in the complex advertising ecosystem, publishers’ signals can get distorted through the myriad of supply chain hops between the sell and buy sides. AI agents can be deployed right at the start of a media transaction (as close as possible to the publisher), allowing for decision making that uses near-perfect data and signal from the source. 

Beyond media quality, these agents can integrate additional intelligence—such as audience insights, contextual relevance, or performance predictions—further enhancing a marketer’s ability to assess and select the right media for their goals. When buyers use AI agents to avoid low-quality media, they will only purchase the inventory they want and need, and will know exactly what they are purchasing.

## **How do agents plug into existing ad tech infrastructure?**

Existing ad tech infrastructure will be able to leverage agents to wholly redesign workflows. AI agents will navigate the nuanced and complex decisioning with intelligence and efficiency for every player in the ad ecosystem:

- **Buy-side:** agents can act as intelligent bid managers, adjusting strategies and bids based on evolving goals, sustainability benchmarks (like Scope3’s emissions data), or any other layer a media buyer wishes to include.
- **Sell-side:** agents can represent media owners, setting dynamic floor prices, negotiating directly with buyer agents, and optimizing for both revenue and sustainability objectives.
- **Measurement and verification:** agents can ingest real-time data from campaign management platforms, adapting decisions to ensure campaigns align with goals.

We also anticipate new enterprises that will push the agentic advertising era forward:

- **Third-party agent providers:** these companies will provide brands with expert agents — which we call simply call ‘experts’ at Scope3 — focused on special jobs to be done (such as agents with special skillsets in governance, audience, etc.).
- **Agentic destinations or distribution partners:** these technology partners or media owners will support agentic advertising from wherever they sit in the ecosystem.

To unlock the full potential of agents across the ecosystem, they need a centralized environment where they can be built, trained, and deployed in coordination. That’s where the Agentic Media Platform comes in.

## **What is an agentic media platform, and how does it work? Who creates advertising agents?**

An agentic media platform supports the creation, management, and deployment of agents tasked with making a universal decision about whether or not to buy an ad. Advertisers, DSPs, SSPs, publishers can use expert agents to drive specific goals. These agents operate within a shared ecosystem, using real-time data to optimize performance and sustainability.

Here’s how Scope3’s Agentic Media Platform works:

On the platform, a brand designs a bespoke media agent or a Brand Standards agent using a Scope3 or third-party agent blueprint.

1. A brand can then deploy these agents to their execution partners to make sure their agents will be running wherever they buy media.
2. A brand’s execution partners (agencies; trading desks) can also create and add custom agents to the brand strategy to support curation, optimization and other agent types.
3. The Scope3 Agentic Media Platform brings together the brand's world of agents to be deployed as a unified execution strategy, either in the programmatic ecosystem and/or via direct buys with our agentic partners.

Follow along on our blog as we continue to share more about agentic advertising, including how and why it will transform digital advertising for the better. Ready to employ your own agent on your next campaign? 


Agentic advertising introduces AI-driven agents into the ad ecosystem.   These agents are capable of making real-time decisions on behalf of advertisers, agencies, DSPs, SSPs, or publishers based on highly complex inputs and data computation.