AI Agents Making the Deals. Who's in Control? Andrew Mole, Andrew Gilbert (pubX) Media Tech Talk #40
Media Tech TalkShow Notes
Part one introduced the agents. Part two asks the harder questions. When software is negotiating with software at machine speed, who is actually in control, and what happens when something goes wrong?
Daevid Richards is back with Andrew Mole, co-founder and CEO of pubX, and Andrew Gilbert, pubX Country Manager ANZ, to move the conversation on from what agentic advertising is to what it asks of the people trusting it.
Andrew Mole opens up a single deal between a buying agent and a sales agent to show what really passes between them, and why he sees it as the inverse of the bid request. He takes the guardrails question head on, and makes a counterintuitive case about where the real risk sits. Andrew Gilbert pushes back on how publishers should think about handing over control, and explains why Australia's history with the bid stream makes trust the first conversation, not the last.
From there, the pair take on the standards question and what agentic could mean for the walled gardens, and Andrew Mole defends the timeline everyone keeps quoting back at him. They look at why ANZ may move later but faster, where agentic goes well beyond display, and close with crystal ball calls on the industry, the independent agencies, and the publishers today's deals have left behind.
If you work in publisher monetisation, agency trading, ad ops or media strategy, this is the conversation about what it takes to trust the machines with the deal.
CHAPTERS
0:00 - When agents make the decisions, who's in control? 0:47 - Welcome back 0:54 - Inside one deal: what passes between two agents 3:17 - Why this is the opposite of programmatic 4:47 - What could go wrong at machine speed? 5:27 - Governance and guardrails built into the protocol 6:59 - Where the real risk actually sits 7:57 - Trust, transparency and first party data 9:43 - Why ANZ publishers guard the bid stream 10:44 - Shared standards or a new set of walled gardens? 12:07 - Making the open web as easy to buy 13:31 - Could the walled gardens open up? 14:36 - Is the agentic timeline real, or just hope? 18:04 - The economic case behind the shift 19:13 - Does ANZ move first, or wait? 20:37 - Why change hits this market harder and faster 21:02 - Beyond display: CTV, audio, out of home and print 21:36 - Agents in print, and the bigger macro shift 23:11 - Crystal ball: Andrew Mole on the next five years 26:52 - When agentic just becomes normal 27:22 - Crystal ball: Andrew Gilbert on Australia 28:38 - Levelling the field for the long tail of publishers 29:43 - Thanks and wrap 30:33 - Next time on Media Tech Talk
CREDITS
💬 Guest: Andrew Mole, Co-Founder and CEO - pubX 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-j-mole/
💬 Guest: Andrew Gilbert, Country Manager ANZ - pubX 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewgilbert01/
🔗 pubX: https://pubx.ai/ 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/pubxai/
🎧 Host: Daevid Richards 🔗 https://linkedin.com/in/daevidrichards/
🏷️ #MediaTechTalk #pubX #AgenticAdvertising #AdCP #AdTech #Programmatic #AIAgents #PublisherMonetisation #AIGovernance #DigitalAdvertising #Podcast
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