Takeaways from egta's 2026 AI Forum: The Agentic Advertising Opportunity for TV and Audio Broadcasters

Will premium TV and audio still command the same brand attention as advertising shifts to AI agents?

Premium TV and audio earn attention that’s hard to come by, with engaged audiences and trusted content. Brands pay for that value, and broadcasters have built strong businesses by selling it directly, on terms they set. As buyers start using AI agents to plan and activate media, the most critical question to answer is whether that approach still works.

It does, and then some. That was the throughline of Scope3’s session at egta’s 2026 AI Forum in Brussels, where leading European TV and audio broadcasters spent three days working through what AI means across the ad sales value chain. Scope3 co-founder and COO Anne Coghlan led a session on a critical part of that shift: how broadcasters add direct-to-agent sales alongside their existing direct business to expand monetization of their inventory.

This post packages up that conversation into five takeaways.

The short version: agentic advertising lets broadcasters keep selling on their strengths while accessing far more demand than direct sales alone can reach.

In this post:

• How premium TV and audio become discoverable to the AI buyer agents planning media
• Why direct-to-agent selling carries the full value of premium inventory, not just a rate and a format
• How broadcasters scale the premium direct model without diluting it
• How sellers keep control of pricing, packaging, and approvals on every deal
• Why now is the time for broadcasters to get started

1. To be buyable, you first have to be discoverable (to agents)

Agentic advertising represents a meaningful change in how media is discovered, valued, and ultimately bought.

Brands brief buyer agents with their objectives, budget, audience, and brand safety requirements, and those agents go to market to find the inventory that best fits. On the sell side, agents representing broadcaster inventory respond to briefs with packages built to match, which buyer agents evaluate and, if chosen, activate as part of their buy. Discovery, negotiation, and execution that once took weeks of human back-and-forth now happen between agents in minutes, at limitless scale.

A critical part of this, however, is that a buyer agent can only consider what it can find. Being buyable in agentic advertising means being discoverable. And being discoverable means having an AdCP-compliant sales agent, such as a merchandising agent, that represents your offering and is ready to receive and respond to briefs. Without one, even the most valuable audiences and programming are invisible to the brands and agencies buying through agents.

2. Direct-to-agent selling amplifies your full value

A buyer agent weighing inventory against a brief can evaluate the totality of what makes premium TV and audio worth buying: the trust of a primetime audience, the pull of live sport, the intimacy of a host-read podcast spot, the editorial context around a flagship program. These are the qualities that justify a premium price, and they’re exactly what gets flattened when inventory is reduced to a rate and a format as is the case with other automated sales channels.

Direct-to-agent selling is different because it carries that value in full. Broadcasters express their strengths in complete terms a buyer agent can evaluate, dynamically packaging products for each brief rather than selling them through a generic impression. And because this market often competes on strategic fit instead of price alone, an agent weighs your inventory on how well it serves the campaign and achieves their principal’s objectives.

For sellers who’ve built something genuinely valuable and distinctive, this dynamic rewards what sets them apart.

3. Scale the premium direct model without diluting it

A premium sales operation has always been capped by bandwidth. Teams can only work so many briefs, which means the model that makes your value known in market also limits how far it reaches. Direct-to-agent selling removes that limitation, without the trade-offs that kept premium sellers cautious about automated monetization channels. A single seller agent fields briefs from more brands and agencies than a team could work by hand, around the clock and against each brand’s specific objectives, while you keep full control.

Seller agents also help you access demand you might not otherwise be able to reach. They respond to briefs that would never come through a typical inbound RFP process, adding to your direct sales motion rather than competing with it.

4. You keep control of pricing and packaging on every deal

A natural concern among broadcasters is that making inventory available through agents means ceding the control that makes their sales operation strong. The opposite is true.

In agentic advertising, human judgment is embedded in the workflow. With a Storefront on Interchange, for example, a seller sets floor prices by property and format, bundles inventory its own way, and approves deals at its discretion or against thresholds it defines. There are no transactions without prior authorization or review, and a seller can extend more autonomy as confidence grows.

There’s also an industry protocol powering these agent-to-agent transactions, and it reinforces that control. AdCP, the open standard built for agentic advertising, bakes in structured data, review on every deal, and human judgment where it matters. The result is controls that hold up at machine speed, so you can open up to far more demand while keeping a say in every transaction.

5. The time to get started is now

Buyer agents representing leading brands and agencies are already running live campaigns, which makes establishing a presence a near-term opportunity for sellers.

The good news is you don’t have to figure it out alone. Resources and communities like AgenticAdvertising.org can help your team learn the spec and build an agent aligned to AdCP, and a growing field of partners can take on much of the work.

Getting started in agentic advertising with Scope3 is as easy as opening a Storefront: your home in the agentic market that makes the full value of your inventory discoverable to the buyer agents already active on Interchange. Every Storefront comes with a merchandising agent you can custom-train the way you’d coach a sales rep, drawing on the media kits, rate cards, and assets you already have. When a brief arrives, your agent assembles a best-fit package within the guidelines you’ve set and delivers it to buyers through your Storefront.

Setup is faster than most expect, as many sellers have a Storefront live the same day. There’s no cost to open or run your Storefront — Scope3 takes a margin on media that flows through Interchange, so you earn as buyers spend.

The opportunity in front of TV and audio

The market is moving quickly, which is the reason to show up now. Buyer agents are building familiarity with the surfaces they can find today, and that familiarity compounds into preference as agent-driven budgets grow. The broadcasters who establish a presence while the market is taking shape will be the ones in contention as it scales, and they’ll help shape how TV and audio sell in this emerging landscape.

The momentum is already building across the industry, with major broadcasters investing in agentic capabilities of their own. NBCUniversal ran the first agentic transaction against live sports inventory on linear TV. Netflix is testing agents that manage, optimize, and buy ads on its platform. Warner Bros. Discovery is rebuilding its ad stack around agentic AI, and Fox has launched an end-to-end agentic advertising platform.

If you run a TV or audio business, the next step is simple: open a Storefront and put your inventory in front of the buyer agents already investing in this market.

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Based on Scope3’s session at egta’s 2026 AI Forum in Brussels, a gathering of TV and audio companies on the practical implications of AI across the ad sales value chain.