LAS VEGAS — The advertising industry is racing to automate video buying, but one agency executive is urging a more measured approach.
Rather than handing over the keys to the machines, Mike Treon, head of CTV and video strategy at PMG, thinks the real opportunity lies in collapsing repetitive workflows while keeping humans firmly in control of strategy and client outcomes.
“Anything we’re looking at with AI is always human in the loop,” said Treon, in a video interview with Beet.TV at CES 2026. “Accelerate, not replace, is always what we want to do.”
Fixing what’s broken first
Treon’s philosophy starts at the bottom of the workflow stack – targeting the mundane, error-prone tasks that consume disproportionate amounts of trader time. Copying and pasting campaigns into multiple platforms, for instance, represents exactly the kind of broken process ripe for automation.
“We can automate and let the human hit the traffic button at the end and use AI as a backstop to catch human error,” Treon explained. The key is structured data and proper categorization, enabling alerts when pacing drifts off target or parameters fall out of bounds.
Deal management has emerged as a particular pain point. The process of categorizing, trafficking, including deals in targeting, and setting bidding requires traders to repeat the same steps three to four times. “That process is just really broken but core to how we buy CTV and premium video,” Treon said, adding that PMG has focused on reducing these multi-step workflows to “a single prompt.”
Humans must courier client success
PMG has been expanding its own AI capabilities. The agency’s proprietary operating system, Alli, received a SmartBrief Innovation Award in October 2025.
As the industry contemplates AI-powered buyer and seller agents negotiating directly, Treon cautioned against oversimplifying the sales cycle.
“Opportunity isn’t generated by technology, opportunity is enabled and enhanced,” he said. Client data and success metrics must remain central to negotiations—not as afterthoughts, but as the foundation of every deal.
For Treon, those “micro-conversations” about reach, frequency, incrementality, and price sensitivity represent precisely the kind of strategic work that machines cannot replicate. “There’s a lot of pieces in that that really develop hard-working campaigns and things that are ultimately going to prove success,” Treon noted.
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.
