If you want to get to the future, you may have to let go of the past. But companies that have operated the same way for 30 or 40 years are finding those very practices now stand as barriers to adopting AI.
“The brands that are really achieving a new level of adoption of AI tools are those who are looking past those old workflows, designing new workflows, working with and collaborating with other partners in the space,” said Dane Kunkel, svp, performance and transformation, Horizon Media, in this video interview with Beet.TV.
The brands breaking through are the ones willing to abandon old operational models entirely and design new systems from scratch, he said – but that requires genuine collaboration with external partners to build something fit for purpose.
The agentic experience takes shape
Gartner projects worldwide AI spending will reach $2.52 trillion in 2026, representing a 44% year-over-year increase.
Horizon has continued building out its AI capabilities, recently partnering with ZeroToOne.AI to integrate predictive behavioral intelligence into its platforms, claiming the ability to anticipate consumer actions with over 85% accuracy.
One emerging area of innovation catching Kunkel’s attention is what he calls the “agentic experience” – a seamless consumer journey from initial ad discovery through to completed purchase, all powered by AI agents working in concert.
The concept involves connecting AI-driven ad formats with agentic websites and automated sales workflows, creating a cohesive path that eliminates friction at every touchpoint. Horizon’s incubator, Horizon MS Labs, has identified several companies pioneering this approach.
“All of those pieces together drive a more seamless experience for the consumer and ideally a faster path to purchase,” Kunkel said. The vision is a shift from fragmented marketing touchpoints to an integrated system where AI agents hand off consumers smoothly from one stage to the next.
Still in the early innings
Despite the hype, Kunkel believes the industry remains in the early stages of AI adoption – while use cases and smaller implementations are emerging across departments, truly transformative, company-wide deployments remain rare.
A key obstacle, he said, is the absence of dedicated AI implementation teams within most organizations. Point solutions are being deployed piecemeal without the connected workflows needed to realize their full potential.
“As companies evolve into this new world, there’ll need to be implementation and transformation teams to help adopt to that future state,” Kunkel said. “Without that, point solutions are being put into the marketplace without full connected workflows, but over time, they’ll get better and better.”
Connected ecosystems are the future
The industry’s chronic fragmentation across tools, platforms, and data presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Kunkel argued that connected systems represent the inevitable direction of travel, as point solutions alone can only deliver incremental gains.
For Kunkel, the real unlock comes when these systems can communicate with each other, particularly from an agentic standpoint. Such interoperability promises to accelerate team efficiencies and improve how media interacts with measurement, creative, and the broader marketing suite.
Horizon has invested in this vision through its HorizonOS platform, launched in December 2025 as what the company describes as the industry’s first open operating system built on an interconnected partner ecosystem. The platform integrates with Blu, Horizon’s AI-native marketing intelligence system.
You’re watching coverage from The AI Media Summit, A Beet.TV & Horizon Media Collaboration, presented by Seedtag & The Trade Desk. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
