AI Won’t Kill Agencies, but Programmatic Advertising Might: Taboola's Adam Singolda
📅 Aug 06, 2026BeetTV13 MIN21 VIEWS15 SEGMENTS · 2 SPEAKERS
CANNES, France — If you expected artificial intelligence to wipe out advertising agencies, Adam Singolda, founder and chief executive of Taboola, has other ideas. The bigger threat, he argues, is that the traditional programmatic advertising business could end up getting replaced by software agents that negotiate directly with each other while humans are still debating the agenda for the next status meeting.
Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Singolda painted a future where agencies survive, publishers adapt and AI handles...
What Adam Singolda said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Singolda said he is very optimistic about agencies, arguing that large holding companies like Publicis, IPG, and Omnicom can now build in-house technology with tools like Claude Code or Codex, acquire first-party data, and collapse ad tech by going direct to consumers. He predicted programmatic buying is archaic and will be replaced by agent-to-agent negotiation and MCPs faster than imagined. On publishers, he said search traffic is down about 20% due to AI mode and Gemini, but remaining users are more valuable. He highlighted DeeperDive, Taboola's free ad-based answer engine, which gets about a third of a million questions a day from USA Today alone, with publishers seeing a 10% revenue increase and 15-25% recirculation rates. He discussed CTV deals with Paramount and LG, praising the Roku deal, and said LLM monetization, with the highest conversion rates at Taboola, could be the next CTV.
Key takeaways
Programmatic buying will be gone faster than we can imagine, replaced by agent-to-agent negotiation and MCPs.
Publisher search traffic is down about 20% due to AI mode and Gemini, and will continue to decline.
DeeperDive gets about a third of a million questions a day from USA Today alone, with 10 million total questions.
Publishers using DeeperDive see a 10% revenue increase immediately and 15-25% recirculation rates.
LLM ads have the highest conversion rate of any ad type at Taboola, and LLM monetization could be the next CTV.
Numbers and commitments
Figure
What it refers to
Type
At
20%
Decline in publisher search traffic due to AI mode and Gemini
2:16But Adam, you're still bullish on agencies, right?
2:55What are you seeing, and what surprised you about what that data reveals that you have on agencies?
4:29So how are publishers fighting back, and what role does DeeperDive play in that?
9:07What are you learning about whether CTV can truly deliver performance outcomes?
11:24Well, Adam, speaking of what's actually happening, briefly, I wanted to get your sense of how AI platforms are monetizing advertising and what's your take on that trend and where that's headed?
It's funny because I had a conversation yesterday about that topic and whether I'm optimistic about agencies or not. And I'm very optimistic. And the reason is, I look at these very large companies who spend tens of billions of dollars with great relationships built over many, many years. I think they have the opportunity for the first time to actually in-house build with Claude Code or Codex or maybe a cursor of SpaceX now, to build real technology, acquire real first party data, look at Publicis with LiveRamp. We know IPG and Omnicom are spending a lot of time and energy bringing those kind of data synergies together. So if you imagine a future where they have unique data and they build internal agents that can then look outside and in many ways collapse ad tech. They don't need anyone in between. For the first time, they have the license to go direct all the way to the consumer through whichever platform they want to go to. They can go to, of course, Google, which has an MCP or Meta. So they have search and social. They can go to open web companies like us and maybe others who have a huge distribution to consumers and first party data. They can go to CTV companies. And when they do all those things, search, social, open web TV, they kind of covered most of it, maybe in-app ads as well. And now, not only do they probably save a lot of money, which is good. Two, I would argue they can create more value to the client. Buying programmatically is archaic, not sophisticated, old school, and will be gone. How soon, I'm not predicting the future. But I think it will be gone faster than we can imagine. And it's gonna be replaced with agent-to-agent negotiation, MCPs, and things of that nature. And because of that, you're gonna create even more value to the client, keep more money, or give money back to the clients, and grow faster.
But I will say, I'm bullish on agencies that will lean in on a strategy that says, we should own first-party data as we work with the best clients in the world. And two, we're gonna build internally, or maybe with partnerships, agents that can negotiate on our behalf, on behalf of our clients, with other big platforms. And by doing so, we create more value to the client. We keep more money, which is always good. I think those... and look, we're seeing Omnicom IPG, obviously, I think, are on that way. Publicis is buying LiveRamp. It's a strong sign to understand first-party data matters. So I think we're seeing big decisions in the right direction.
So Adam, Taboola has data on whether agencies are going all in on automated campaigns, whether that's programmatic in the future or not. What are you seeing, and what surprised you about what that data reveals that you have on agencies?
7 more exchanges in this transcript
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Singolda, A. (2026, August 6). AI Won’t Kill Agencies, but Programmatic Advertising Might: Taboola's Adam Singolda [Interview transcript]. BeetTV. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1162115/
MLA
Adam Singolda. "AI Won’t Kill Agencies, but Programmatic Advertising Might: Taboola's Adam Singolda." BeetTV, 6 Aug. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1162115/.
BibTeX
@misc{singolda2026_1162115,
author = {Adam Singolda},
title = {AI Won’t Kill Agencies, but Programmatic Advertising Might: Taboola's Adam Singolda},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, BeetTV. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {aug},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1162115/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
