Media agencies build audit tools to prevent AI agents from overcharging

Media agencies deploying AI to speed up their planning and buying practices are discovering that the tech won’t deliver savings if it’s left to run by itself — it has to be monitored.

As agentic tools developed to aid audience targeting, campaign set-up or media execution proliferate, some agencies are beginning to build tracking or auditing tools. The hope is that they’ll allow staffers to check that AI tools aren’t hallucinating or burning through tokens.

“It can get out of control very, very quickly,” said Jonathan Whiteside, global evp of technology at Dept.

Related Insights

Keeping an eye on agents

Most companies (56%) are still implementing AI tools without clear usage policies, while marketing leaders specifically are less likely to assign financial controls to their team’s AI usage, according to an April survey of 1,300 senior marketers conducted by Gartner. The consultancy estimates that 60% of organizations using AI will face cost overruns related to the technology caused by lack of usage tracking. Some of the agencies in the forefront of AI agent development are attempting to get ahead of that problem.

Performance media agency Rise, part of the Quad agency group, has been testing AI media buying agents with a supermarket client since June, according to group director Klaudia Smykowska. She declined to share the name of the advertiser.