AI Agents Help PMG Target Ads on Fox News Without Freaking Out Clients

AI agents are helping brands rethink news content as an ad channel. 

News has long been a no-fly zone for advertisers who are skittish of landing next to stories about war, mass shootings or polemical political figures. But now, agentic AI—the latest digital buzzword—are helping marketers revisit that stance.

Digital marketing agency PMG tapped into Mobian’s AI personas—AI agents that simulate a brand’s ideal customer—to launch a campaign for a $10 billion health brand. By feeding in prompts about who it wants to target and enlisting brand safety parameters, PMG generated a persona that then programmatically identified content on Fox News for targeted ad placements through The Trade Desk.

Just 18% of the campaign’s spend went to Fox News but drove 34% of total conversions, at a 46% lower cost per conversion versus campaign average, Jonah Goodhart, co-founder and CEO of Mobian, said during IAB’s Tech Lab Summit in New York City. 

“We’re seeing signals that we just didn’t have before, such as the emotion or the sentiment,” said Sam Bloom, PMG’s head of partnerships. “[The AI] helps remove a lot of biases and allows you [to target] at very granular signals,” adding that the technology “refutes common myths” about runnings ads against news.

The shift comes as publishers scramble to stay afloat, battling shrinking subscriptions and a steep drop in referral traffic from platforms like Google. According to WARC, global ad spend with news brands is projected to hit $32.3 billion this year, down 33% from 2019. Elsewhere, companies like Scope3 are deploying AI agents to tackle brand safety concerns.

At Fox, brand safety filters have massive implications, with ad revenue losses from restricted delivery climbing into the tens of millions, according to Aaron Letscher, vp of platform partnerships at Fox Corp.

“The challenge we’ve been trying to solve is that legacy measurement and verification systems are blunt and tend to be applied on the buy side,” said Letscher. “Yes, we have to ensure the brand safety box. [AI agents] give us more flexibility to have a dialogue with partners on the buy side.”