LAS VEGAS – For years, buying premium video advertising meant navigating a maze of separate workflows, incompatible systems, and manual processes that kept linear television and streaming in distinct silos.
But that fragmentation is now collapsing under the weight of artificial intelligence, which is reshaping how advertisers access and activate across the entire video landscape.
“AI is transforming how premium video is even being accessed,” said Soo Jin Oh, chief commercial officer at FreeWheel, in this video interview with Beet.TV at CES 2026. “It’s really turning static packages into speed, simplicity and that cross platform orchestration.”
From GPS to autonomous navigation
Oh drew a parallel between AI’s evolution in advertising and the transformation of navigation technology.
“Generative AI and agentic AI is what I call autonomous navigation, where now you don’t have to set routes, the systems talk to one another, recognize data points like traffic, image recognition, and they get you safely while also giving you that control,” Oh said.
The advertising industry is embracing this transformation rapidly. According to a July 2025 report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, 22% of video ad creatives were either built or enhanced using generative AI in 2024, with that figure projected to nearly double to 39% by 2026.
Interoperability as the foundation
For AI to deliver on its promise, systems must be able to communicate and collaborate rather than compete for control. Oh emphasized that closed systems limit AI’s potential, essentially automating silos rather than enabling genuine intelligence.
“AI extracts value only when systems could think together,” Oh said. “It needs signals and context across the entire workflow and when you have a closed system, AI doesn’t get smarter, it just automates silos.”
FreeWheel has built its platform with interoperability as a foundational principle, applying machine learning for yield optimization, forecasting, and pacing over many years. The next layer involves agentic AI, with the company building custom solutions while enabling an open interface for customers to extend their own agents. “I like to call it the layered intelligence where you get a platform with intelligence built in but also designed for your innovation to be built on,” Oh said.
Live sports as the proving ground
The most compelling evidence for agentic AI’s practical value emerges in complex, high-velocity environments where static automation simply cannot keep pace. Live sports, with its scarce inventory and demand that spikes in milliseconds, represents the ultimate test case.
“Agentic AI is different because it doesn’t follow static rules, but it learns, it responds in real time and it thinks immediately across streaming and linear,” Oh said.
FreeWheel announced a proof of concept at CES in partnership with RPA, NBCUniversal, and Newton Research, enabling agents to orchestrate across linear and streaming in real time. The company plans to introduce live NFL football linear inventory this quarter, a historically difficult environment to automate.
You’re watching “Tailwinds of Transformation, a Beet.TV Leadership Series at CES 2026, presented by FreeWheel” For more videos from this summit, please visit this page.
