LONDON — The ad industry is far past the “experimental stage” of artificial intelligence use cases, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the messy complexity associated with the transition is over.
“You have to wallow in the mud, which is there’s so much change happening and it’s such transformative change,” Ramsey McGrory, President of Mediaocean’s omnichannel platform Prisma, told Beet.TV contributor Robert Andrews at the Beet.TV and WPP Media Leadership Summit. “You really have to spend time understanding what’s the underlying technology? How is it going to change? What do the people and processes have to do differently?”
The human element often represents the greatest change as teams adapt to new workflows and capabilities.
Ongoing acquisition strategy
McGrory estimates that Mediaocean has spent nearly a billion dollars on acquisitions over recent years to build out its capabilities across three groups: omnichannel with Prisma, video ad serving with Innovid, and fraud detection with Protected Media.
“Fortune favors the bold. This is a market that’s changing rapidly and we’ll continue to use M&A to do that,” McGrory said when asked about future acquisition plans.
The company runs these groups side-by-side with dedicated teams while building integration points that help advertisers and agencies invest in brand growth and revenue generation.
Early stage execution
Ahead of 2026, Mediaocean has been focused on advancing AI’s transition from experimental testing to operational deployment, with dozens of initiatives spanning internal tactical improvements to strategic transformations.
“Increasing the productivity of our engineering is an example. AdCP is what I call programmatic meets AI and that’s much more transformative,” McGrory said, referring to the late 2025 release of the Advertising Context Protocol, which promises to standardize how AI agents communicate across the buy and sell sides. “We’re in the early stages of a new phase of transformation in advertising.”
The fundamentals remain constant—advertisers invest in advertising to grow brands and drive sales—while execution methods transform significantly as they have for 20 years and will continue for the next decade or more.
Convergence drives client strategy
Mediaocean focuses on various forms of convergence including digital and linear integration, media and creative unification, measurement evolution, and global consolidation as agencies invest in proprietary platforms.
“A lot of what we do is focused on different types of convergence,” McGrory said. “The long arc of media bends towards convergence and that drives everything that we do with our clients.”
The company supports agencies by rationalizing and automating decades-old processes while embracing AI capabilities and programmatic integration.
Change management takes priority
The coming year will emphasize change management, piloting, and training as much as technology deployment, with investment in teaching teams to understand and use AI tools.
“We’re in the experimentation and rationalization stage as new technology comes about,” McGrory said. “We spend a lot more time externally with our partners because we have to redefine in the context of digital how linear happens or how measurement changes going from panel to pixel and one channel versus omnichannel.”
Partnership engagement becomes critical as the industry establishes standards enabling advertising transactions at scale with low costs.
“We’re in a state of significant change and I think that’s the new normal and something that we really have to embrace,” McGrory said.
You’re watching coverage from Beet.TV’s Global Leadership Summit with WPP Media, filmed in London, presented by Criteo, Index Exchange, Seedtag & The Trade Desk. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
