What AI Agents in Marketing Actually Do
AI agents in marketing are specialized software systems that autonomously plan, negotiate, and execute tasks across media buying and selling workflows, coordinating between platforms, agencies, and publishers in real time while still operating under human-defined guardrails. Instead of existing as chatbots on top of tools, these agents connect directly into media buying platforms, inventory systems, and data sources to turn campaign goals into concrete actions such as selecting audiences, choosing placements, managing approvals, and activating campaigns. This shift matters for both buy-side automation and sell-side AI because it reduces the manual emails, file exchanges, and disjointed platforms that have long slowed down media trading. In digital out-of-home advertising, that means an AI agent can move from strategy to screen without handing off spreadsheets between planners, media owners, and ad operations teams.
Broadsign’s Sell-Side AI: Automating Out-of-Home Monetization
On the sell side, Broadsign has built an AI agent around its out-of-home (OOH) management and monetisation platform to automate how media owners package and sell inventory. Working with Global Netherlands and agency Draft Digital, Broadsign’s sell-side AI agent helped deliver what the company calls the first fully agentic AI OOH campaign for the charity lottery Lot of Happiness. The system used the brand’s campaign goals to guide audience and venue targeting, media selection, and campaign setup across a large global OOH media supply that includes video-enabled displays, in-store media, and on-screen cinema inventory. According to Broadsign CTO Bryan Mongeau, overlaying AI on its static and digital OOH supply, combined with data capabilities such as screen-level audience indexes and dynamic creative, “sets the stage for a paradigm shift that will transform the OOH business.”
Draft Digital’s Buy-Side Agent and Real-Time Coordination
On the buy side, Draft Digital’s AI agent is designed to turn brand objectives into executable campaigns without the usual back-and-forth between planners, traders, and media owners. For Lot of Happiness, the buy-side agent collaborated with Broadsign’s sell-side AI over the AdCP protocol and the underlying OOH data infrastructure to plan, book, and execute the campaign end to end. Agentic AI powered the full buy, from interpreting campaign goals to managing creative workflows and approvals through to execution on premium outdoor screens. Human teams provided oversight and guardrails, but coordination of complex tasks across parties happened at machine speed. This level of buy-side automation begins to make digital out-of-home work more like other programmatic channels, with tighter collaboration between quality publishers and agencies and a cleaner ecosystem grounded in first-party performance data, as Draft Digital describes it.
Why AI Agents Matter for Media Buying Platforms
The collaboration between Broadsign, Draft Digital, and Global Netherlands shows how AI agents marketing can change the role of the media buying platform itself. Instead of being a tool that humans manually operate, the platform becomes an environment where buy-side and sell-side AI agents negotiate and coordinate in real time. This reduces inefficiencies that come from fragmented workflows: disconnected planning tools, manual trafficking, and slow responses to inventory or audience changes. With agentic AI, outdoor inventory can be discovered, planned, bought, and measured with speed and precision closer to online channels. As Global Netherlands’ business development leadership notes, outdoor can be “planned, bought and activated with the same speed and data-driven precision as any digital channel,” making inventory more accessible to buyers who want seamless, omnichannel campaigns.
From Experiment to Operating Model for Buy- and Sell-Side AI
For brands and media owners, the first fully agentic OOH campaign is less a one-off experiment and more a template for how buy-side automation and sell-side AI could operate at scale. Lot of Happiness, a growing charity lottery with around 100 000 participants and over €50-million donated to good causes, sees agentic digital OOH as a way to gain efficiencies that larger players take for granted. For media owners like Global Netherlands, AI agents promise more demand and easier access for omnichannel buyers, while platforms such as Broadsign aim to unlock the full trading power of their OOH supply. As these systems mature, expect media buying workflows to shift from manual coordination to supervised automation, with AI agents handling routine operations and humans focusing on strategy, oversight, and creative direction.
