How AI agents work in media buying and programmatic

AI agents are changing how media buying works, making advertising smarter, more sustainable, and more aligned with a brand’s values. Here’s how.

Agentic AI will power the next wave of digital advertising. But what does that mean in practice? How do AI agents evaluate content, make decisions, and work with the advertising ecosystem in real time?

In this post, we explain how Scope3’s Agentic Media Platform powers AI agents that evaluate every impression across platforms, publishers, and programmatic. You’ll learn how they operate technically, and what it means for advertisers and media owners.

In this Article:

• What are AI agents in advertising?
• Where do the content signals come from?
• How AI agents classify and evaluate content
• How AI agents make real-time decisions across the ecosystem
• Why AI agents matter for media buyers
• Why AI agents matter for media sellers
• Ready to activate an agent?

What are AI agents in advertising?

In advertising, AI agents are intelligent, automated decision-makers that evaluate media opportunities on behalf of a brand. These agents combine brand-specific preferences — like safety, suitability, sustainability, and narrative goals — with real-time data about content and context.

In Scope3’s Agentic Media Platform, each brand or advertiser can create and deploy their own AI agent that evaluates impression opportunities before making a buy-or-skip decision. The agents integrate seamlessly across the media ecosystem, operating within demand-side platforms (DSPs), supply-side platforms (SSPs), publisher ad servers, and platforms like Meta.

Where do the content signals come from?

Scope3’s classification engine starts with high-quality content inputs. To evaluate the content behind each impression, we gather signals from multiple sources, including:

• Publisher direct: Integrations with publisher technologies and ad servers provide access to URL-level content and multi-modal data (such as text, images, audio, and video).
• Scope3 crawler: Our crawler regularly scans the open web to extract page-level content and contextual cues, with frequent recrawling to keep data fresh and accurate.
• Platform data: We ingest content and metadata from large media platforms, enabling robust analysis across diverse content types.

Each of these sources feeds into our content pipeline, ensuring that classification is always based on real-time, accurate data.

How AI agents classify and evaluate content

As content signals are gathered, brand agents evaluate them in real time.

• Powered by LLMs: Agents use large language models to assess the content of a page, as well as the intent, tone, and nuance. This approach improves classification accuracy and reduces over-blocking by enabling Scope3's LLM to interpret context before acting.
• Brand-specific logic: Each agent uses two major modules:
  • Brand Standards for safety, suitability, and sustainability rules
  • Brand Stories for targeting based on marketing narratives
• Tokenized content: Content is broken into artifacts (or tokens), which are scored and classified for alignment with brand objectives

The result? Media classification that understands both content and brand objectives with unrivaled nuance.

Example: A financial article flagged for mentioning the word “crisis” might actually be a valuable placement for a bank running a campaign around financial planning. The bank’s AI agent, by understanding the article’s nuance and framing, can classify it as safe and contextually relevant.

How AI agents make real-time decisions across the ecosystem

Agents operate across the entire ad ecosystem to make decisions at scale. Here’s how:

• Connected to programmatic pipes: Agents deliver real-time decisions via integrations with:
  • DSPs like The Trade Desk, DV360, and Amazon
  • SSPs like Index Exchange and Equativ
  • Publisher ad servers
  • Platforms like Meta
• Runs within auction latency limits: Agents evaluate and respond to each impression within the ~100ms constraint of real-time bidding
• Same logic across channels: Whether the impression is programmatic, direct, or in-platform, the same brand-specific logic is applied.

This infrastructure makes Scope3’s agentic model uniquely adaptive and scalable.

Why AI agents matter for media buyers

For media buyers, AI agents mark a shift from manual, fragmented decision-making to consistent, intelligent, and adaptive buying – with much greater control at every step.

Instead of juggling separate tools and rules across channels, buyers gain precise control over what qualifies as suitable, high-quality media and what goes into targeting segments. This control and logic are embedded into agents which can be deployed seamlessly and consistently across platforms, optimizing for performance, brand standards, and sustainability in real time.

Key benefits include:

• Greater control with consistent decisioning: Define exact criteria once, and have agents apply that same logic across programmatic, publishers, and platforms
• Smarter, customizable targeting: Build and reach truly bespoke audiences based on context and narrative, not just standard segments, giving you greater control over who you reach
• Reduced carbon emissions: Buy media aligned with your sustainability goals using Scope3’s sustainability signals
• Higher quality, lower waste: Avoid misaligned and low-quality inventory, as defined by your specific criteria

Why AI agents matter for media sellers

For publishers, platforms, and SSPs, AI agents unlock new, more controlled ways to connect high-quality inventory with the right buyers at the right moment. By evaluating content, context, and audience signals in real time, agents can help sellers maximize yield, improve buyer trust, and surface inventory that might otherwise be overlooked.

Media sellers can expect:

• More accurate classification: LLM-powered agents reduce false blocks and unlock monetization for previously overlooked inventory
• Clearer brand fit: Agents match content to the right buyers precisely and in real time
• Direct monetization: Agentic media supports publisher-direct pipes—not just programmatic auctions.

In short, AI agents help quality media owners capture more demand from aligned advertisers.

Ready to activate an agent?

The future of media buying is agentic — defined by real-time, AI-powered decisioning that reflects each brand’s goals, values, and carbon standards.

Ready to see it in action?

Explore the Scope3 Platform and build your agent today:

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