For many in the media planning and buying world, the daily work remains full of manual processes and disconnected spreadsheets.
But, as artificial intelligence continues its march across the industry, some are seeing an opportunity to rewire that legacy system. The goal is to create an integrated ecosystem that automates the grunt work, freeing up human talent to focus on innovation and higher-level strategy for clients.
That is the approach at independent agency Crossmedia, which has spent the last 18 months building its own modular operating system to streamline the entire media investment process. The system is designed to reduce the “enormous amount of time and manpower” spent on manual tasks, said Kaitlyn Mcinnis, executive director, integrated investment lead at Crossmedia, in this video interview with Beet.TV.
Building a learning loop
At the core of the agency’s effort is a platform called XMOS, led by the company’s CTO, Jess Lewis. The system works by ingesting a client brief and then pulling from a wide array of data sources, including first-party data, multi-touch attribution and marketing mix models, and competitive intelligence to generate a recommended plan, according to Mcinnis.
“It’s doing our reach frequency curves, channel allocations. And of course, there’s human application to that,” Mcinnis said. “So we’re going in, we’re reviewing those, we can change them, modify them. And essentially it’s pulling away all of that manual lift on our teams.”
Crucially, the system is designed as a closed loop. It tracks campaign performance data from the marketplace and feeds it back into the model, creating a cycle of continuous improvement. “Ultimately when we go into marketplace, it’s then grabbing the performance of it and feeding it back into the module operating system,” she added. “So the next time that we’re brief from our clients, it’s pulling from past performance, so it’s iterating and evolving over time.”
Beyond efficiency to innovation
The primary target for this automation is what Mcinnis described as a “fragmented environment” where planners, buyers, and performance teams all operate in separate spreadsheets. This makes even simple historical queries a significant challenge. “When clients come in and they’re like, ‘Hey, what is my spend in my performance of the last five years?’ It takes an enormous amount of time and manpower to run around,” she explained.
The IAB projects US ad spending growth will accelerate through 2026, largely fuelled by the transition of AI from pilot programs to core operations. This includes the rise of so-called “agentic” AI systems, like a proof-of-concept unveiled by NBCUniversal to plan and optimize TV campaigns, which automates tasks that once took days.
For Mcinnis, the ultimate benefit extends beyond simple efficiency gains. “What AI is doing for us is it’s decreasing the manpower so that we can have the actual strategic mindset to pause and think about what we’re putting together,” she said. It provides the “time and space to be able to innovate and put together really great recommendations and optimizations for our clients.”
Human governance is paramount
Despite the emphasis on automation, Mcinnis insisted that human judgment remains an indispensable part of the process, particularly when it comes to final approval. The potential for AI to produce flawed or biased outputs means a human backstop is non-negotiable.
“Humans have to be at the forefront in the final governance and sign off,” she stated. “And that’s because AI can hallucinate. It has biases and as humans, we are accountable for our clients’ investments. And ultimately we’re accountable and responsible for what hits consumers.”
Mcinnis believes independent agencies are well-positioned to maintain this balance, tying it to a people-first culture. She argued that indies have an advantage in an era of rapid technological change. “Culture isn’t being lost here and I do think that Indies do have a leg up on that right now because we’re paying attention to that people-first mentality,” she said, citing her company’s founding pillars of “trust, reason and the pursuit of happiness.”
