Fox Expands Agentic Push With Eyes Set On TV Upfront Future

Fox is turning its agentic dreams into a reality as it expands on what the company calls the TV ad industry's "first end-to-end agentic platform." As the company continues its push into AI-powered technology, Fox told ADWEEK it's now entering the next phase of its agentic rollout. This means adding more agency partners; expanding agentic capabilities to include end-to-end linear and, eventually, digital transactions; and looking to make agentic a bigger part of upfront conversations in the future. According to Jeff Collins, Fox's ads leader, the tech advancements are ultimately creating more impactful relationships with clients and partners. "As long as I've been in this business, we're always trying to find ways to make our clients' media either more efficient or more effective, and that sometimes is through the use of creativity, and sometimes it's through the use of technology. What I've seen with agentic is that it actually accomplishes both," Collins told ADWEEK. How we got here Heading into Cannes Lions over the summer, Fox Advertising told ADWEEK that it created a secure agentic system to work across audience planning, media transactions, and activation. The offering, which is powered by the company's data and tech platform, Fox AdStudio, allows for buy-side agents and sell-side agents to communicate and act autonomously. Phase 1 of the program, which launched at Cannes, included testing with agency partners WPP and Horizon Media, with a buyer agent approaching Fox’s seller agent and establishing a secure connection. Now in Phase 2 of its agentic rollout, Fox told ADWEEK it's added Omnicom, Stagwell, and Simulmedia to its list of partners, executing agentic linear transactions for live campaigns. According to Fox ad sales chief strategy and operations officer Stephano Kim, the tech is saving hours of time in the early pilot programs. "Some of our clients executed about a dozen campaigns. What was interesting is that those dozen campaigns would have taken at least an afternoon, maybe even a whole day with a bunch of back-and-forths between buyer and planner to figure out a plan and execute," Kim said. "The agents, with human approvals on both sides, did it in a matter of minutes." A look at Fox's new agentic capabilities Among the benefits, Kim noted the technology is allowing for better and more secure audience targeting. According to Fox, in the past, data sharing required custom clean rooms, which are a costly and time-consuming effort from campaign to campaign. With the new agentic system, Fox can create a secure, continuously refreshing data linkage between companies. "In the future, you wouldn't necessarily need to create a clean room from scratch, put in the data, share the data, validate the data, figure out the match rates, improve the match rates, [etc.]. That whole workflow eventually gets shrunk down into an agent talking to another agent," Kim said. Fox also noted that the technology is being implemented with enhanced governance, with agencies getting bespoke Fox agents to work with, which can securely verify identities and permissions for transactions virtually instantly. The company did its partner pilot programs for linear with relatively small budgets, but now that Fox has successfully demonstrated its agentic capabilities, the company will look to add end-to-end digital planning and buying by early 2027. It all brings Fox one step closer to rolling out agentic buying and planning at scale, according to Kim, with vigorous testing along the way. "Underneath the surface is not just proving out a digital buy, but if we had to do hundreds, if not thousands, of concurrent transactions, what would that look like? Where could an agent go off the rails? Where could data leak? After this next phase with digital going into the upfront, we should have the capability to scale this pretty quickly," Kim said. What happens next Following its digital implementation, Fox will look to have a fully converged media planning and buying platform by the 2027 upfront, with Collins telling ADWEEK he foresees agentic playing a larger role in client conversations moving forward. "Now that we've proven out that this can be effective and can work, we have some room before we actually get to the upfront," Collins said. "I do think it'll be a larger part of discussions." For Collins, upfront partnerships nowadays are much larger than media discussions alone, and agentic will fit into the mix along with conversations about data and technology as partners look at their relationship with Fox for the year. "The upfront is where we really solidify a lot of those conversations and that roadmap moving forward, and the timing really aligns with where we're at right now, from all the testing that we've been doing," Collins said. Ahead of a fully converged agentic platform in 2027, Collins also noted that the company is already seeing the impact. The Fox ad sales leader said the sales team is bought into the new tech, which is enabling more meaningful conversations with clients, allowing them to focus on topics like the effectiveness of creative rather than the minutiae of media plans. "It's good for the buy side. It's good for the sell side, and perhaps most important, it's good for a lot of our employees on both sides as well, who are now going to be learning new skills and performing more important and meaningful work," Collins said.

AI News

Fox Expands Agentic Push With Eyes Set On TV Upfront Future

Fox adds new agentic agency partners, expands into linear buys, and looks ahead to upfront

UNLOCK FULL ACCESS

Bill Bradley

Convergent TV

The Chicago Bulls Logo Controversy Is Not What It Appears to Be

Smart TVs, Smarter Ads

Move Over Social—CTV Is About to Revolutionize the Ad Experience

How MLB Made an Urgent Pitch to Fans for the 2026 Playoffs

ADWEEK TV Advantage: The Playbook for Making a Successful NFL Ad

Netflix Confirms It's Laying Off 6% of Staff

Jay Askinasi to Lead Skydance Ad Sales, WBD Ad Leaders Exit After Merger

How Bacardí and AMC Resurrected the Crypt Keeper After 30 Years

Not This Tight End! Gronk Recalls Turning Down $4 Million Offer From Adult Website