Agentic advertising is moving from theory to practice. Vlad Stesin of Optable shares what’s actually changing, which companies are leading, and why workflow automation is now essential.
Media and advertising professionals are watching agentic advertising shift from a theoretical concept to a practical reality. Vlad Stesin, CEO and Co-Founder of Optable, recently discussed with AdExchanger Managing Editor Allison Schiff how the industry is moving beyond buzzwords and into real implementation.
Stesin identified workflow automation as the critical, if unglamorous, foundation for agentic ad tech. He argued that automating processes is the first step toward enabling AI agents to operate effectively in advertising transactions. According to Stesin, companies making genuine progress are focusing on building agent-ready infrastructure rather than chasing hype.
He also pointed to Publicis’s $2.2 billion acquisition of LiveRamp as a signal of where value is emerging in this new landscape. Stesin described how, in practice, a buy-side AI agent can now transact directly with a publisher that has adopted agentic infrastructure, marking a shift from traditional methods.
Stesin emphasized that the real transformation is not just about new technology, but about a fundamental change in behavior across the industry. This shift, he said, is finally underway. For those interested in related developments, a recent report examined how AI models are moving from DSPs to SSPs, changing how programmatic ad decisions are made and allowing advertisers to evaluate every impression in real time. Read more in this analysis of the shift in programmatic decisioning at how AI decisioning is being integrated into SSPs.
