The Digiday Podcast: CES 2026 — Agentic AI Hype vs. Media Buyers’ Pragmatism

Date: January 13, 2026
Guests:

• Kimeko McCoy, Senior Marketing Reporter, Digiday
• Tim Peterson, Executive Editor, Video & Audio, Digiday Media
• Seb Joseph, Executive Editor, News, Digiday (fresh from CES 2026)

Episode Overview

This episode offers a deep dive into the major advertising and media trends emerging from CES 2026, with a sharp focus on the tension between the industry’s hype around agentic AI and the measured, pragmatic approach of media buyers and marketers. While agentic AI dominated the conference floor, Digiday’s team unpacks how buyers are responding warily and prioritizing workflow gains over revolutionary change.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Vibe at CES 2026

• Notably Different from Previous Years:
  • Seb noted a shift from chasing shiny objects to a hard-nosed effort to untangle previous year's unresolved complexities.

    “It was a really intense but kind of necessary reset heading into sort of 2026… it felt like less of an industry chasing the next kind of shiny object and more like one trying to untangle the loose threads it left hanging kind of last year. Particularly, you know, when it came to sort of AI.” — Seb Joseph [01:00]

2. AI Hype Floods the Show — But Buyers Aren’t Swayed

• AI and ‘Agentic’ AI Announcements Everywhere*:
  • Vendors across CES were “hawking some AI powered something” or touting agentic capabilities.
• Marketers’ and Buyers’ Reactions:

  • There’s a divide between public-facing announcements and private skepticism.

  • LLMs (large language models) are reshaping workflow, but not ready to replace human decision-making, especially in media buying.

    “LLMs are not yet fit for autonomous buying. … They excel at probabilistic reasoning … but programmatic buying is built on deterministic optimization.” — Seb Joseph [02:54]

  • Philosophical barriers, not just technical ones, hold back autonomous AI in ad transactions.

• Buyers’ Mantra:
  • “Garbage in, garbage out” surfaced repeatedly—a warning about over-relying on AI trained on ad ecosystem data. [08:19]

3. The NBCUniversal Agentic Pilot: Outlier or Turning Point?

• NBCUniversal’s Surprise Move:
  • Despite broad industry reluctance, NBCU announced a pilot program with RPA and Freewheel for agentic buying in TV/digital, “actually enabling AI agents for buying” [05:01].
  • Surprised the hosts:

    “That seemed to fly in the face of what I was expecting for this year of AI agents not touching transactions, where NBCU is here saying … we are absolutely having AI agents touching transactions and potentially big transactions.” — Tim Peterson [06:18]

• Industry Skepticism Remains:
  • No evidence yet of major advertisers or holding companies spinning up similar buy-side agentic AI.
  • AI trained on existing (often flawed) programmatic supply chains could entrench and accelerate existing blind spots rather than fix them.

    “Teaching AI on that substrate would not make advertising necessarily smarter. It would sort of make its blind spots more permanent … and more expensive. It would just compound a lot of the worst aspects of online advertising.” — Seb Joseph [06:30]

4. Economic Reality and Workflow Optimization

• Pragmatism Over Whiz-Bang:
  • Buyers and CMOs are focused on workflow, not full automation: faster, cheaper, better processes up to the point of the ad buy.

    “It’s workflow stuff. Everyone wants to do things faster, cheaper, better but ultimately that is about everything up until an ad is kind of bought… That will be the thing that will really drive growth for marketing services businesses.” — Seb Joseph [14:42]

• Major Change is on Hold:
  • No significant shift in marketing practices to embrace autonomous AI yet—most activity is still “tests or projects with intentions to do X, Y and Z in years, not months.” [11:41]
• CFOs Aren’t Forcing Change:
  • The market’s relative stability means no urgent push for disruptive adoption: “Until … some of that starts to look more dicey, it’s hard to see CFOs ordering any kind of major shifts around sort of AI.” — Seb Joseph [13:41]

5. The Hidden (and Growing) Costs of AI

• Expense Is a Major Consideration:
  • The high and still-rising cost of compute/inference and token usage for large-scale LLMs is a growing concern, especially at agency scale.

    “[Wes Deha, S4 Capital:] as [AI] becomes a bigger component… it will naturally have to become a bigger component of the deals it brokers… and how it starts to sort of charge CMOs as well.” — Seb Joseph [16:58]

6. Retail Media Networks & Agentic AI

• Retailers Test Agentic Features:
  • Walmart Connect is piloting agentic AI for sponsored search campaigns, but buyers aren’t clamoring for it:

    “I talked to one commerce expert … does any of this seem useful, this agentic AI offering? And he said ‘no, I don’t know who’s asking for this.’” — Kimeko McCoy [14:00]

  • Advertisers’ interest is firmly rooted in workflow improvement, not flashy agent-driven autonomy.

7. Who Stood Out at CES? Growing Power Players

• Nvidia’s Rising Influence:
  • Not just on the ad tech side, but increasingly involved with agencies as an infrastructure provider.
  • OpenAI’s absence noted: They’re yet to have a major “coming out party” for the ad industry, potentially eyeing Cannes as the venue.
    • “It sounds like … if [OpenAI] are going to make us have a sort of coming out party to the ad industry, it will be there [Cannes].” — Seb Joseph [18:53]
• Agencies on the AI Offensive:
  • WPP and Omnicom are touting agent hubs, but it appears to be part legit innovation and part narrative-building for market positioning.

8. The Elusive Future of AI Chatbot Ads

• Ads in LLM Chatbots Not a Big Conversation:
  • Despite moves like Walmart’s Sparky chatbot and Google expanding AI Overviews with ads, attendees are more interested in influencing how brands surface organically in these bots than in ad formats.

    “A lot of the attention … is more about how they can show up in them organically… when it becomes a bigger issue, [the industry] is kind of content for now to sort of worry about it later on down the line.” — Seb Joseph [23:06]

9. Creators & Measurement: The Emergent Agenda

• Creator Economy Not a Focal Point:
  • Less discussion than in previous years, but new momentum around creative measurement:

    “This year will be the year where creative measurement kind of finds its footing… don’t be surprised if by Cannes in the summer you see launches from [Nielsen, Publicis] in terms of their own currencies.” — Seb Joseph [24:40]

• Fragmentation Looms:
  • Many currency providers may emerge, risking further marketplace fragmentation.
• Data Accessibility Bottlenecks:
  • Platforms are starting to open up more for measurement, potentially in anticipation of standardized currencies.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On AI’s Limits and Industry Caution:

  “Garbage in, garbage out.” — Media buyer (via Seb Joseph) [08:19]
  “Turkeys don’t vote for Thanksgiving, right?” — Seb Joseph, on industry wariness to automate itself into obsolescence [21:51]

• On Agentic AI Announcements:

  “I’m yet to see any kind of business and subsequently marketing team make any major shifts on the AI front. … Everything that we see in the press is tests or projects with intentions to do X, Y and Z in years, not months, not weeks.” — Seb Joseph [11:41]

• On Financial Uncertainty:

  “There’s also uncertainty when it comes to the financials because I haven’t talked to anyone who has a sense on what the regular recurring costs for AI would be.” — Tim Peterson [15:59]

• On OpenAI and Ad Chatbots:

  “OpenAI wasn’t at CES. … It sounds like if they are going to sort of have a coming out party to the ad industry, it will be [at Cannes].” — Seb Joseph [18:53]

Timestamps for Major Segments

• Opening & Introductions: 00:10–01:00
• CES 2026 Vibes & Big Picture Takeaways: 01:00–02:16
• AI/Agentic AI Hype vs. Reality: 02:16–08:18
• NBCU’s Agent AI Buying Pilot & Industry Comparison: 05:01–10:20
• Holding Companies, Economic Drivers, Pragmatism: 10:20–14:42
• Retail Media & Workflow vs. Autonomous AI: 13:48–15:59
• AI Cost Structure Concerns: 15:59–18:37
• CES Standout Players, Nvidia, OpenAI: 18:37–22:03
• AI Ad Chatbots, Organic Influence, Ad Inventory: 22:03–24:16
• Creator Economy & Measurement Fragmentation: 24:26–28:49
• Event Wrap-Up & Forward Look to Cannes: 28:49–29:43

Tone and Takeaways

The tone of the episode is candid and lightly irreverent—skeptical of hype but detailed on nuance. The hosts and Seb Joseph show respect for what CES achieves but are refreshingly clear-eyed about the limits of current innovations and the slow pace of meaningful industry adoption. Listeners will walk away with a clear sense of what is real versus performative in the ad world’s march towards AI, and a preview of where attention is likely to turn next: pragmatic workflow improvements, the true cost of AI, and the coming battle to define creative measurement currencies.

For further details and in-depth reporting, check Seb Joseph’s Future of Marketing briefing on Digiday.com.