Quick Overview:

  • Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) is upgrading its advertising technology stack with expanded agentic AI capabilities from its cloud computing partner, Amazon Web Services (AWS). The information comes from a press release shared with Marketing Dive.
  • The parent company of HBO Max plans to shift from traditional, siloed internal workflows to what it describes as a more automated and data-driven approach. AI agents will be applied to media planning, dynamic forecasting, real-time campaign optimization, and closed-loop measurement.
  • Integrating the ad buying experience into a unified AI platform that covers both linear TV and digital media aims to help advertisers allocate budgets more efficiently across WBD's properties and more easily adopt emerging ad formats.

Deep Dive:

WBD had already made agentic AI a key selling point during its annual upfront pitch to advertisers and agencies last month. Now, the company is providing a clearer roadmap for its plans to achieve greater automation in the ad buying process. The news comes ahead of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity next week, amid a wave of industry announcements about agentic ad buying. Cannes Lions is a major gathering for advertisers, and AI is expected to be a central topic of discussion at the conference.

It is still too early to determine how much agentic AI will reshape the advertising industry, but platforms and content owners are racing to adopt related solutions to gain a leading position on a critical technological frontier. Broadcaster Fox earlier this week claimed to have launched the industry's first end-to-end agentic advertising platform, a product supported by partners including WPP, Horizon Media, and Comcast's Universal Ads.

WBD's agentic transformation is positioned as a way to simplify processes for advertisers, integrating linear and digital buying under one system while offering greater flexibility in campaign planning, targeting, and measurement. According to the press release, AI agents can "continuously self-optimize," meaning that—at least in theory—they will be able to learn over time and ultimately deliver better campaign performance. WBD has previously assured advertisers that humans will still lead key decision-making processes, and it argues that improvements to the back-end experience will benefit viewers, who will see more personalized and contextually relevant ads.

WBD has been gradually rolling out more agentic features this year, spanning areas such as direct response advertising, commerce workflows, advanced audience forecasting, and measurement and attribution. The company plans to launch its unified media planning tool in the third quarter, followed by AI-driven composable order management, pricing, and stewardship capabilities.

A key advantage for WBD may lie in its partnership with AWS, which is deepening to support this comprehensive overhaul of its agentic ad tech stack. WBD is leveraging services including Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, Amazon SageMaker, and Amazon Quick to ensure its AI investments achieve the promised level of sophistication while maintaining data protection and security.

WBD's advertising business declined 7% year-over-year in the first quarter, with revenue falling to $1.85 billion. The weak performance was attributed to declines in linear advertising and the absence of NBA-related programming. Hanging over WBD is its planned mega-merger with rival Paramount, a deal that recently received clearance to proceed from the U.S. Department of Justice. Completion of the deal is likely to mean even more changes in how WBD handles its advertising business.