In the context of Gartner’s technology hype cycle, agentic media buying is approaching the “peak of inflated expectations” stage. At least that is the view of this adtech CEO and former equity analyst.
In an August report, Gartner predicted that over 80% of U.S. ad spend will transact with material AI influence by 2028.
“Advertisers and agencies are increasingly buying and managing media through advertising platform interfaces and APIs. Over time, AI will become more deeply embedded in decisions involving ad delivery, audience selection and pricing.”
Dstillery released its DS-1 agentic AI advertising platform in late 2025. It provides end-to-end media buying workflow acceleration across the campaign lifecycle. From planning and custom audience modeling to activation and in-flight optimization, DS-1 keeps human experts in control of every decision while agents handle the manual work.
It essentially enables the convergence of digital media campaign management and decisioning that Gartner envisions.
Observations from the field
In the twelve months that DS-1 has been in-market, Dstillers from nearly every part of the company have been demoing it relentlessly. We have been in countless meetings with adtech partners, media agencies and brands.
That experience has provided rich and current insight into the state of agentic technology in the digital media buying ecosystem.
Reception to DS-1 has been strong. We have three dozen partners using DS-1 — directly through our UI, through Slack and Teams extensions, and through MCP server integrations. And our pipeline is growing fast. We have some heavy users reporting significant workflow improvements, including cutting the campaign setup process from days to hours, frictionless audience discovery, modeling & iteration, and easy campaign optimization.
Moreover, virtually 100% of all media buying agencies and adtech platforms that we work with are in the building phase with agentic AI. All of our partners, whether connected to DS-1 yet or not, are deeply engaged in developing their agentic strategies, capabilities and tech stacks.
As of now though, very few of them are actually employing agentic AI at scale in their digital media buying operations, and the technology is at an emergent stage.
Media buying is complex, and to do it well at scale requires a carefully tuned, controlled and efficient process. The largest media agencies employ thousands of people and manage billions in client ad spend. They face relentless pressure from brands to deliver performance and value. At the same time, many brands are risk averse. They do not permit their agencies to rush headlong into new technologies with their budgets without significant due diligence.
The result of all of that is that the actual use of agentic AI in media buying is significantly lagging the hype.
Mapping the hype cycle
This brings us back to the Gartner technology hype cycle for agentic media buying.
In Dstillery’s view, and with the mosaic of data and anecdotes that we have gathered, we are at the stage of rising expectations, based on the following conditions:
- Very few adtech companies have scalable, production-ready solutions in-market. Most are still carefully curated demos between parties that “could” work, but they are not yet implemented in day-to-day workflows.
- Most buyers are still at the investigation and preparation phase, with few actually ready to scale AI in their media-buying operations.
- The industry trade press is definitely at the stage of amplifying the hype around how media buying will be transformed.
We have attempted to pinpoint where on the curve those conditions would place us, which is approaching the peak of expectations.
If this is right, and the technology follows the classic hype cycle pattern, the next stage we will see is a proliferation of suppliers, followed by a peak in expectations. Expect to read many more articles about how AI will fundamentally transform and revolutionize digital media buying.
However, adoption will continue to progress slowly. That disconnect will lead to disappointment, and we will slide into the trough of disillusionment. People who were previously bullish will become bearish. They will start to doubt whether the potential is as compelling as they believed at the peak of inflated expectations.
Sentiment will collapse, and expectations will overshoot reality again, this time to the downside. Meanwhile, adoption will start to broaden. Eventually, expectations and adoption will converge.
I will not speculate on how long that all takes to unfold, other than to say that AI lends itself to fast cycles, and structural media buying inertia lends itself to slower cycles.
There is no doubt that today, expectations are high and rising. We see it every day in our conversations with clients and partners, and in the trade press. There is also no doubt that actual adoption is low.
In my view, though, the adoption of agentic AI to enhance digital media buying workflows is inevitable. The economic incentives to do so are undeniable. The potential gains in advertising effectiveness and efficiency will prove irresistible to brands and their agencies.
More AI adoption will also fundamentally reshape the adtech industry.
As more advertisers, agencies and adtech platforms bring AI into their digital media buying processes in search of efficiency and performance, the adtech supply chain will become more transparent and accountable. It will become much easier to understand — objectively and confidently — which ecosystem partners are providing differentiated value, which are commodified, and which are just exploiting industry inefficiencies and opacity to keep the lights on.
The Gartner hype cycle model suggests that we are in for a wild ride, with highs and lows on the immediate horizon. It also tells us we are still quite a ways away from the level of adoption necessary to transform media buying. But that is the destination of the road we are on, and there is no turning back.
The path forward
At Dstillery, our mindset is to ignore the hype cycle. The gains we are seeing for clients already are real, and our focus is on the fundamentals. What capabilities does AI unlock for our brand and media agency customers, and our activation partners? How can those new capabilities unlock more value from our highly performant predictive audience targeting technology?
Recognize the hype cycle for what it is: a roller coaster of human emotions. Do not get swept up in it.
True value creation will come from the tangible use cases that deliver performance, efficiency and effectiveness for media buyers. That is where we are focused, and that is where the real transformation of media buying will happen.
