AdExchanger Want AI Agents That Work? You've Gotta Do The 'Unsexy' Stuff First
Sep 29, 2026
Abby Klassen, CEO of performance agency Tenuity and former advertising trade journalist, explores the unglamorous foundations behind effective AI. She discusses unified measurement, holistic ROAS, fragmented marketing stacks, and why reliable AI agents need clean data and governed workflows. She also examines agency talent, creativity, and the risks of fully autonomous advertising.
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Apply Day One Thinking To Media Decisions
- Treat waste as more than inefficient media spending; include wasted time and slow decision-making.
- Revisit inherited processes with “day one thinking” instead of automatically repeating last year’s plan.
Measurement Must Make Marketing Value Visible
- Marketing technology creates value when it makes business outcomes visible, not when it merely adds another dashboard.
- Bliss Point combines cleaned data, incrementality, multiple forms of MMM, and brand-equity modeling in one measurement foundation.
AI Should Raise Judgment Not Remove It
- AI should raise the quality and ambition of human work rather than simply reduce headcount.
- Tenuity expects humans to judge agent recommendations, with autonomy increasing only after results become trustworthy.