FOX Advertising has moved its agentic advertising platform from demonstration to live execution. The company announced that leading agencies are now completing real agent-to-agent transactions for linear campaigns through FOX AdStudio, marking one of the more concrete steps yet toward AI-driven media buying that actually places orders rather than merely recommending them.
The next phase includes WPP, Omnicom, Horizon Media, Stagwell and Simulmedia. These partners are using an evolved version of the infrastructure FOX introduced earlier this year as the industry’s first end-to-end agentic advertising platform. That earlier version already connected audience planning, media transactions and activation. The update adds the practical layer needed for production use: dedicated, permissioned accounts for each partner, direct agent-to-agent connectivity, and an integrated governance engine that monitors activity for compliance.
Smarter inventory recommendations
One of the more interesting capabilities is how the system handles unavailable inventory. Instead of simply dropping a requested spot from the order, the FOX agent can recommend alternative inventory based on the advertiser’s target audience. The approach keeps human oversight in place while giving the agent more room to optimize within clear guardrails.
Jeff Collins, President of FOX Advertising, Marketing and Brand Partnerships, framed the shift as moving from capability to real-world execution. “From the beginning, our vision for agentic advertising has been to connect the campaign lifecycle and create a more seamless and effective experience for advertisers,” he said. “Now, together with our partners, we’re putting those capabilities to work on live campaigns — moving agentic advertising from capability to real-world execution while maintaining the governance and human oversight essential to doing it responsibly.”
Agency partners echoed the practical focus. WPP Media US Chief Media Officer Susan Schiekofer called the ability to safely execute live agent-to-agent transactions “an important technical milestone” in defining standards for responsible scale. Omnicom Media’s Justin Wroe noted that connecting the company’s Omni platform to FOX AdStudio allows audience planning against linear and CTV exposure data, with transactions orchestrated at the spot level against client outcomes.
Horizon Media and Stagwell highlighted the reduction in friction. Horizon is routing agent-to-agent communication through its open ecosystem with Databricks. Stagwell’s Marissa Jimenez pointed out that linear has historically been slow; with their Media Machine connected to FOX AdStudio, an agent can turn a client brief into an actionable media plan in real time.
What this means for linear
Simulmedia founder Dave Morgan went further, arguing that the architecture has broader consequences. For the first time, he said, advertisers and agencies can optimize linear TV campaigns more like digital — with automated, agent-to-agent negotiations at the spot, schedule and flight level, mid-campaign, based on closed-loop outcome data such as web visits, app downloads or purchases.
The development sits at the intersection of three areas the industry has been watching closely: the push toward agentic workflows, the desire to bring more data and flexibility to linear television, and the need for governance so that automation does not outrun accountability. FOX is not claiming full autonomy. The system is designed with human oversight remaining essential, and the governance engine is meant to enforce protocols rather than remove people from the process.
Whether this model spreads beyond FOX’s inventory or remains a specialized capability will depend on how cleanly the agent-to-agent connections work in practice and how comfortable brands become with the balance of speed and control. For now, the announcement shows that at least some of the largest agency groups are willing to run live linear transactions through an agentic system rather than waiting for a fully mature industry standard.
Source: FOX Corporation
