TLDR: Two new startups, Adaly and Anthrologic, are making waves in the advertising industry by offering AI-powered agents designed to automate tedious and time-consuming tasks. These AI agents can handle everything from pulling reports and crunching numbers to suggesting media budget adjustments, aiming to free up marketers to focus on broader strategic initiatives.
The advertising world is on the cusp of a significant transformation with the arrival of AI agents, and two startups, Adaly and Anthrologic, are at the forefront of this revolution. These companies are introducing personalized AI tools that promise to bring a new level of productivity and efficiency to advertisers by automating a wide range of tasks.
Anthrologic’s CEO and founder, Tyler Pietz, explains that these AI agents function similarly to AI chatbots but are capable of much more. ‘They can basically do anything that a human can do on a computer,’ Pietz claimed. This includes complex operations like pulling reports, suggesting adjustments to media budgets, and analyzing data. For example, an Anthrologic user could task an AI agent with scanning log-level data to find discrepancies or to analyze the potential impact of inflation on regional ad buys. The setup for such an agent is estimated to take about a month.
Adaly, founded last summer, has already secured $1.3 million in a seed funding round and has had its technology beta-tested by the chocolate giant Hershey’s. Anthrologic, founded in September, is currently self-funded and recently announced a partnership with the retailer Anthropologie. Both companies have built their platforms on top of large language models like ChatGPT and can respond to both text and voice prompts.
The primary goal of these AI agents is to eliminate the ‘grunt work’ that often bogs down marketing professionals. Kyle Csik, co-founder of Adaly, who, like Pietz, has a background in the agency world, stated, ‘Marketers are still logging into 15 different platforms every day…when a marketer is in-housing someone, they’re hiring a person that can push the right button, right system at the right time, but not somebody that’s thinking about the broader picture.’
While Adaly is targeting both indie agencies and brands, Anthrologic is focusing its efforts specifically on brands. The emergence of these startups has not gone unnoticed by the major players in the advertising industry. Holding companies like Omnicom and Dentsu are already investing in their own AI agents. Havas is also in the process of building its own AI agent, according to its Chief Activation Officer, Mike Bregman.
Despite the potential of these AI tools, industry experts believe they are not yet a threat to agency jobs. ‘Agencies have a lot of specialization built in that a machine can’t replace today,’ Bregman said. He added that while AI can streamline processes like budgeting, it lacks the nuance required to work with major players like Disney, Warner, NBC, Google, and Meta.
Pietz also acknowledged the limitations of the current technology, particularly the issue of ‘hallucinations’ or inaccurate outputs. ‘The reality is that we’re still in such early days, I don’t know if we can fully and confidently solve all the potential issues that can arise,’ he said, emphasizing the need to ‘leave a human in the loop for this stuff.’
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The sentiment is echoed by Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, who believes that brands will soon need to get comfortable with AI agents, suggesting a future where merchants compete for the attention of AI agents rather than people.
