The news: AI platforms are expanding from media sellers into end-to-end advertising systems, pressuring agencies’ traditional role as intermediaries. OpenAI and Amazon are embedding planning, creative, and optimization directly into conversational AI tools, collapsing functions that agencies historically managed.

• In an interview on its company podcast, OpenAI monetization lead Asad Awan described a future where buying ads on ChatGPT feels like talking to an assistant, with the system testing bids, adjusting spend, and optimizing automatically based on defined objectives and budgets.
• Awan said removing the need for performance marketers or agencies could lower costs, particularly for SMBs, and envisioned conversational ad formats and agentic systems that proactively surface relevant products or discounts.

Amazon Ads has launched Creative Agent in the UK, per Advanced Television, an AI tool within Creative Studio that helps advertisers research audiences, generate concepts, build storyboards, and produce video and display ads via chat. Creative Agent draws on Amazon retail data and shopping signals, extending automation beyond execution into creative production.

Zooming out: Platform-led AI automation is accelerating financial and structural pressure on the traditional agency model.

• Agency margin pressure is already visible: While global ad spending rose 8.6% YoY in 2025, holding company revenues fell 1.2%, signaling platform automation is capturing market share from agencies.