AI Shifts From Agency Novelty to Baseline Requirement in Media Buying

Media planning has crossed a structural threshold where artificial intelligence is treated as standard operating procedure rather than an experimental showcase.

According to Bharat Sharma, co-founder and chief operating officer of Affinity Global writing for Digiday, brand marketers have overhauled their expectations for agency partners. Modern campaign briefs routinely frame agentic AI planning as a fundamental benchmark rather than a speculative test.

Sharma noted that the advertising sector has officially exited its initial discovery phase. Advertisers are no longer asking whether prospective agency teams are testing AI platforms, focusing instead on documented performance outcomes and strategic roadmaps projected years into the future.

## Higher Hurdles for Agency Tech

This evolution changes how commercial brands and entertainment marketers evaluate external media partnerships. The focus has moved from adopting high-profile technical buzzwords to demonstrating measurable cost efficiencies and operational speed in live campaigns.

For studio marketing divisions and streaming operators navigating disciplined promotional budgets, the normalization of automated planning tools brings sharper accountability to media spend. Hollywood Tomorrow views this transition as a dividing line for legacy agencies, where firms unable to prove computational efficiencies risk falling behind faster, tech-forward competitors.

As Sharma outlined via Digiday, the ubiquitous rollout of algorithmic tools is fundamentally altering how the media ecosystem values automated workflows, cementing AI as an unavoidable requirement across commercial planning.