The two executives sat down with Digiday Editor-in-Chief Jim Cooper and Senior Editor-in-Chief Michael Burgi for a wide-ranging conversation about how AI is adapting to Dentsu’s processes and what we can expect from this emerging market.

The following conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Given this major change on the horizon, what are the issues you want to ensure your clients are protected against?

Swain: This is very important preparation. Because I think the agency dynamics have changed and the agency ecosystem is different than it used to be. I think macroeconomic factors are having a big impact on customers’ minds at the moment. That’s why you need to be flexible within your pre-commitments to ensure your customers can adapt to whatever happens in the global economy.

Right now, we feel like Agentic is at the forefront of everyone’s agenda: our partners’ agenda, our agency’s agenda, our client’s agenda. If we look at this situation ahead of time and look ahead to the next 12 months, we can see that the implications are very real from an agent’s perspective. How do we build and design for that? When we approach that, we look very carefully at the investments we’re making on behalf of our clients and make sure it’s aligned with the trends we’re seeing within the market, so that we can ride out those trends.

Kaminko: One of the things that really impresses me about what agent functionality allows us to do is that it’s no longer linear. Things that would normally happen consecutively, even for a single team, are now happening simultaneously. I think this is also creating a different kind of intelligence.

This is the most programmatic prepayment ever. What do you think about this? And what does it mean when you incorporate AI into programmatic skew?

Swain: Our Merkle strategy was to build an identity graph quickly. None of the other holding companies are doing this for the first time. We did that in 2016. As a result, we believe we have media and programmatic chops that are strong enough to understand addressability within the market. We’re front and center on this and we think it’s a huge opportunity for us. See how we bring together our digital performance capabilities as an agency group: iProspect, Merkle media, and 360i. We have a very strong pedigree in this field and we think that’s a real competitive advantage in this space. We’ve been driving the move to programmatic and the move to performance in this proactive process for many years. There’s definitely some partners that lean more into that than others, and it’s those partners that we lean into.

Is speed as important to your clients as it is to you when it comes to efficiency?

Swain: It’s an absolute battleground for all categories at the moment. Application of AI and agents to business. All kinds of investors are paying attention at the moment, so there’s value there. For anyone to demonstrate the acceleration of agentic application to their business now, it will be a new story within their business and for their market.

Kaminko: Without compromising quality…especially where the client owns some of the data themselves, when you know the client is also doing what needs to be done. It is completely our responsibility and we want to make sure we are never the underdogs of it.

Clients seek agency partners who are ahead of the curve in core areas of expertise such as media and marketing. What we hear from many of our clients is that every company is now preparing for its own AI future. Given the cost and investment, the decision has been made. This is where I’m so bullish on agencies, and I don’t think enough has been written about this. This is our core service and our core expertise. And even clients who have dabbled in it a little bit at some point will say, “We need to focus on the core of what we’re offering to consumers, and we need to have partners that are building trusted, best-in-class expertise in terms of technology tools.” I feel like that was part of Heineken’s decision. [Dentsu recently won the brewer’s media business.]

Are high-trust clients such as financial services and healthcare moving further in AI?

Kaminko: We have had these technology clients in the past [including Adobe] They are already embedded in the AI ​​space. Being able to take them to customer zero as a client and as an agency partnership and then jointly deliver that to other businesses that we jointly serve was a huge advantage for us. Regarding your point about these categories, like financial services and healthcare, I don’t know if they’re always ahead of the curve, but I think the protections and risk mitigations that are in place for them are probably much more mature than many other companies.

What are the key interrogation points that keep humans involved in the process?

Kaminko: If you think about how the roles are changing with this, there’s the concept of the human in the loop, but there’s also the concept of the human in the loop, especially as we start to have full end-to-end agency. And we’re bringing in more orchestrators, people who understand the end-to-end capabilities and understand what both sides are designing for, what’s going on in the backend and what can be applied there to what’s delivered to the client. It’s a completely different talent.

What is that person called? What is their title?

Kaminko: We talked about it a lot. Is it the orchestrator or the architect?

Swain: I used to be a planner. The planner receives the outline and runs it through to completion.

Kaminko: I also like the return to communication planning there. Because strategists are not a single type. It’s about understanding the entire end-to-end process.

color code by numbers

10 years ago National Advertisers Association has dug into the underbelly of SS Media Agency with a K2 report detailing all sorts of hidden and opaque activities the media agency was engaged in, from hidden kickbacks from publishers to major media uses of which clients were unaware. On June 1, ANA will bring together some of the authors of the K2 report to discuss how far the industry has come and how far it still needs to go. “The biggest improvement, perhaps fundamental, is awareness,” said Bill Duggan, vice president of ANA. “A lot of our members don’t know what they don’t know…We’ve tried to educate them. [them on] The importance of updating contracts and including appropriate clauses in those contracts. ” The organization also surveyed 126 ANA members, 108 of whom passed the screening question (“Do you have at least a working knowledge of your company’s relationships with the media?”), revealing the following statistics:

• 56% Your media agency contract has been renewed within the past year. 89% in the last two years. However, updates do not consistently address the most important issues.
• 54% They renewed their contracts specifically to address rebates (18% no, 28% don’t know).
• 61% Renewed contract to accommodate major media (16% no, 23% don’t know)
• 43% The proportion of advertisers in 2026 who are concerned about the level of transparency from media agencies is down slightly from 46% in 2014.
• Among those who are anxious, 49% 42% say their concerns have increased over the past year, up from 42% in 2014.

takeoff and landing

• Korean home appliance major samsung Award India Meanwhile, in Australia, incumbent Clemenger BBDO was removed from creative and media review. According to reports, public relations Given that the company handles most of Samsung’s remaining media and creative work, it’s a good bet to win there.
• Move account: There are many other media movements in India: Publicis’ zenith won lorealMedia business with WPP Media’s Wavemaker. and havas media won the media business of Marriage dot com.
• Personnel changes: media plus named Kostin Mikhaila He will become global chief market officer. essence media com He served as Global Customer President until the end of 2025… Christian Julesformer CEO of WPP Media (then called GroupM) joins AI company AkkioBoard of Directors of … Production of WPP promotion Santiago Sanchez Lozano As CEO of EMEA, he expands beyond Central Europe and adds the rest of continental Europe to his remit… Horizon Media blue hour studio hired kristen king I am coming here as Managing Director from Note:where she was chief experience officer.

direct quote

“I have been saying for some time that there is no CTV frequency or linear frequency problem. There is a TV screen frequency problem that affects consumers, advertisers, and publishers. When a consumer gets 14 frequencies on linear and 2 frequencies on CTV, it’s a nuisance for the consumer, a waste of money for the advertiser, and a missed monetization opportunity for the publisher.”

— Research veteran Howard Schimmel, president of Janus Strategy and Insights, in a MediaVillage column with fellow research veteran Bill Harvey.

speed reading