Kyle Spraker says AI and answer-engine ads are an evolution of search and need standard metrics.
Kyle Spraker predicts manual ad buying will be obsolete by January and says agentic buying's fee impact is unclear.
Kyle Spraker expects publisher consolidation and direct brand-publisher relationships that emphasize content quality over quantity.
AI advertising needs a measurement standard before budgets move
Advertising inside AI chat and answer engines is the next search, and the industry is walking into it without a measurement standard. Kyle Spraker argues AI can hold a conversation and read attention and emotion, which makes it an evolution of search rather than a replacement, but budgets will not follow until marketers can read one set of metrics across an entire investment and see inside the black box. Agentic buying then threatens to make manual media work obsolete and to reshuffle media buyers and publishers.
Takeaways
AI ads extend search rather than replace it. Spraker calls it an evolution, 100%, because AI can hold a conversation, read attention and emotion and keep learning about the user. He compares the moment to mobile apps a decade ago and to fragmented CTV.
The industry lacks standard AI ad metrics. Budgets are being tested inside LLM environments, and Spraker expects that to be fast-tracked. Marketers want a standard set of metrics they can read across an entire investment. Their test is a dollar in, a dollar fifty out.
Funnel stages are blending into one. Spraker says awareness and the funnel stages are merging, and some marketers treat it as one massive funnel. Confidence depends on transparency. Advertisers fear a black box where AI applies what worked for one CPG client to another.
Agentic buying will retire manual ad work. Spraker predicts anything done manually today will be gone, probably by January. It is too early to judge the effect on DSP and SSP fees, and he expects marketers to look at a different DSP with features built for agentic buying.
Falling publisher traffic is an industry problem. Spraker expects publisher consolidation, which could create direct brand-publisher relationships and shift the emphasis to quality of content over quantity. Unlike AI and LLMs, consolidation does not need a new measurement foundation, and measurement across a direct publisher is in good standing.
Clients ask how, not what, happened. Spraker, twelve years at IAS, remembers when a display ad was the only thing measured. He repeats the claim that human attention spans run about eight seconds, and says clients want to know what drove the outcome rather than what the numbers were.
The women's sports shift
ESPN now runs almost a fifty-fifty split between men's and women's sports, Spraker says.
He cites a Cannes panel figure that investment in women's sports grew about 10x, though he also recalls it as a 2x rise in overall spend.
Athletes have become their own influencers, with Caitlin Clark and the LPGA as signs of the shift.
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On this episode 3
Show 1
Brands are seeing better engagement and traffic in women's sports, and he says they are only scratching the surface of athlete influence.