Digiday Media Buying Summit

Registration opens and our team will be ready to greet you. Please stop by to check in and grab your badge.

Welcome. The editorial team will kick off the day’s sessions.

How will AI impact programmatic investment? How much is it already being integrated — and does that come from the DSP side or on the agency side?

Brands want more content, faster and cheaper. Agencies are increasingly being asked to help make it happen, but how do they build content capabilities without becoming production companies? And how can agencies get clients comfortable moving at the speed the market now demands?

The walls between media, creative, data and technology are getting harder to defend. How far into the creative and design process should media agencies go? And which AI tools and platforms are actually helping agencies plan, build and buy more effectively, rather than simply adding another layer of tech?

As brands become more sophisticated about creator marketing, are they also making it less interesting? What happens when risk management, brand safety and client approval turn creators into increasingly predictable versions of themselves? And does an endorsement mean anything if the creator doesn’t genuinely believe in the product?

Take a break, grab a coffee and connect with fellow attendees before the next session begins.

Agencies & brands only. Join us for a Town Hall session where we will create a challenge board and have an open and candid discussion about the industry. Together, we’ll create a challenge board and explore the real issues you’re facing — think of it as group therapy.

Sandboxes:

4:45pm – Realtor.com

4:55pm – Channel Factory

5:05pm – AdDaptive

Join us for a welcome drink and networking ahead of the 10-Minute Meetings.

The 10-Minute Meetings are designed to help connect participants with innovative technology platforms and build valuable business relationships.

Wrap Day 1 with cocktails and network with your peers. Open to all.

Fuel up with breakfast, courtesy of Digiday, as we get the day started.

Welcome back! The editorial team is about to kick off day 2.

The retail media gold rush created an increasingly crowded market. Now the question is who survives. Are advertisers finally ready to cull the long tail of lower-value networks, and what separates the retail media businesses that become essential from those that become expendable?

AI is changing not just the work agencies do, but the people they need to do it. What does hiring look like when technical fluency becomes as important as media expertise? Which roles disappear, which new ones emerge, and how do agencies retrain the talent they already have?

If AI can analyze audiences, inventory, performance and pricing in real time, what happens to the traditional media plan? Are agencies moving toward continuous optimization rather than quarterly planning, and what does that mean for strategy, client relationships and the role of the media buyer?

Platforms, publishers, retailers, creators and data companies all claim increasingly valuable pieces of the consumer relationship. As third-party signals disappear and walled gardens expand, where can agencies actually find an independent view of the audience? And who ultimately controls the data that drives the buy?

Take a break, grab a coffee and connect with fellow attendees before the next session begins.

Agencies & brands only. Join us for a Town Hall session where we will create a challenge board and have an open and candid discussion about the industry.

Sandboxes:

11:30am – Zefr

11:40am – Simulmedia

11:50am – Elite Media Group

12:00pm – Infolinks

Recharge with lunch and network with peers.

Take a break from today’s content, catch up on work or spend time with fellow attendees. We’ll see you back for 10-Minute Meetings.

The 10-Minute Meetings are designed to help connect participants with innovative technology platforms and build valuable business relationships.

Join us for cocktails to wrap Day 2. Open to all.

Fuel up with breakfast, courtesy of Digiday, as we get the day started.

Welcome back! The editorial team is about to kick off the final day of sessions.

Advertisers have more data than ever and arguably less clarity. Between incrementality, attribution, attention, MMM and platform-specific measurement, the industry has accumulated a dizzying number of ways to define success. What measurement approaches are actually changing investment decisions, and which are just creating more dashboards?

Brand safety used to mean avoiding objectionable content. Now it can mean navigating politics, polarization, misinformation and increasingly complicated questions about where a brand wants to show up. How are agencies helping clients make principled decisions without turning media buying into an exercise in risk avoidance?

Agencies are being asked to do more: create content, build technology, manage creators, navigate retail media and deliver better performance. But clients aren’t necessarily willing to pay more for all of it. Where does the economics of the agency model go from here, and what services are actually worth paying a premium for?

For years, scale meant Meta, Google, Amazon and the other dominant platforms. But as advertisers look for diversification, new opportunities are emerging across CTV, commerce, creators, gaming, communities and emerging media. Where are agencies actually placing their next bets, and which “next big things” are finally becoming meaningful parts of the media mix?

Digiday moderators will recap the event’s key takeaways.