{"slug": "stagwell-enhances-its-ai-powered-tools-on-the-media-side", "title": "Stagwell enhances its AI-powered tools on the media side", "summary": "Stagwell launched The Media Machine, an AI-powered operating system for media buying and planning, extending its existing The Machine platform. The system integrates with major sell-side ecosystems like Google, Meta, and TikTok, enabling agentic buying and workflow automation across Stagwell's agencies. The move positions Stagwell to compete with larger holding companies by offering an interoperable, open-sourced alternative to proprietary systems.", "body_md": "Stagwell has launched The Media Machine, a media-side extension of The Machine, Digiday has learned. The Media Machine is essentially the challenger holding company’s equivalent of an operating system, powered and empowered by AI.\n\nThe Media Machine extends what Stagwell has spent the better part of two years building with [The Machine](https://digiday.com/media-buying/media-buying-briefing-how-generative-ai-is-being-applied-in-big-and-small-settings/) (but which formally launched in January 2026), in that it’s a media-specific operating layer that enables workflow through an integrated operating system. Working up and down the funnel, The Media Machine aims to execute agentic buying via a more connected process across Stagwell’s existing media stack.\n\nThe operating system can work directly with sell-side ecosystems including Google’s GMP products, Meta, Microsoft/LinkedIn, TikTok and The Trade Desk, and can plan and activate in one workflow. There’s separate audience-first planning from brief through to activation via an ID graph, and advanced market mix modeling helps to make quicker and more accurate performance insights followed by decisions. Its builders say it’s open-sourced enough to work across platforms including Figma, Slack, Teams, Adobe, and performance dashboards, which obviates the need for new closed-system software.\n\nOne of those builders is Slavi Samardzija, global chair of media and commerce at Stagwell, who explained that Stagwell’s AI plans and vision were already well underway when he joined the holdco a year ago. And he’s worked closely with Brad Nunn, managing director of media at Stagwell agency Gale, who got the effort going in the first place. Gale and fellow media agency Assembly are the tip of the spear in developing and rolling out The Media Machine, but it’s designed to work across all of the holdco’s agencies and units.\n\nSamardzija joined Stagwell in 2025 following an 11-year stint at Omnicom, where he was instrumental in the creation and running of that holdco’s Omni operating platform. He said it’s been interesting to see an OS being built from the outside — since The Media Machine was already in the works under Nunn.\n\n“By going through all of the steps of the media workflow, we are supporting just as much the innovation and strategy as we are tactical decisions in QA,” said Samardzija, who noted that humans still make final decisions and approvals, today at least. “The balance of automation changes, but the role of The Media Machine is to deliver that, because the AI is automating both the workflow and also the consumer experience — and we, as marketers, are advertising both to humans and to the machines and agents.”\n\nJay Pattisall, vp and senior agency analyst at Forrester, noted with interest that Samardzija would choose to build an interoperable, agentic layer for an OS given his past experience with Omni. Pattisall pointed out that other ex-holdco execs are doing the same at other, arguably more nimble outfits — for example, Roy Armale, who Pattisall recalls was instrumental in developing WPP Open. “It would appear given the chance to do it again both choose interoperability with client technology, said Pattisall. “But it’s no surprise Slavi would start with agentic technology as its the latest.”\n\nFor his part, Nunn played up the interoperability of the entire system, across the The Machine and The Media Machine. “There’s a lot of agent to agent communication across both Code [Code and Theory Network, which built The Machine] and The Media Machine to make sure that information is passed back and forth,” said Nunn, who said a number of clients are in alpha testing, and there’s a rollout schedule for the next set of clients. “And we’re able to leverage all the operating system structure that The Machine creates for us, while also ensuring that we have deep media tools to drive efficiencies for clients.\n\n“Every module application within the tool actually has a lot of connectivity with one another,” Nunn added, “so all the agents within the platform are talking to one another, as well as with the MCPs that we’ve created within the media platforms.”\n\nPattisall pointed out that while The Media Machine uses an agentic layer to sit on top of brand/ advertiser tech stacks as an intermediary layer to enhance activation, what sets it apart is the connection into the audience data system the holdco has with Palantir for audience data. It’s a second-generation OS, where first-generation systems like Omni and Acxiom, MRCL and Epsilon, dentsu Connect and Merkury or WPP Open and InfoSum are closed systems. “But at the end of the day all agency OS arrive at the same end: end-to-end marketing workflows powered by AI and data,” he said. “The Media Machine accomplishes this through different means, including interoperability with client stacks and third-party partners.”\n\nPerhaps, noted Samardzija, is the fact that the other holdcos are stuck having to still operate with legacy systems, where Stagwell being a younger company, has more freedom to build it today — much like if an airport were designed from scratch today, it wouldn’t resemble an airport built even 20 years ago.\n\nThat’s exactly what Adam Katz, CEO of Sightly, noticed — the speed with which Stagwell is moving because it’s not bogged down with legacy systems and internal politics. Sightly just got its [Brand Mentality MCP platform](https://digiday.com/media-buying/agencies-continue-to-expand-ai-capabilities-to-boost-brand-performance/), which helps brands understand culture and audience behavior in real time, integrated into Agent Cloud, an AI agent marketplace within the Stagwell’s other unit, Stagwell Marketing Cloud.\n\n“Stagwell is prepared for the future, they’ve done a very good job of moving fast and being prepared for how to operate with new agentic systems and speed,” said Katz. “it was impressive how much they knew what they wanted — they know how to take the technology, they’re future ready, and they understand what they’re trying to do.”\n\n### More in Media Buying\n\n####\n[\nOmnicom Media rolls out research showing the need for CTV advertising to change its ways ](https://digiday.com/media-buying/omnicom-media-rolls-out-research-showing-the-need-for-ctv-advertising-to-change-its-ways/)\n\nOmnicom plans to tackle frequency problems with streaming while also bringing a greater degree of contextual relevance to the advertising it creates, plans and activates for clients.\n\n####\n[\n‘Humans at the helm, agents in the loop’: WPP is testing a buyer ageny for video, but it’s bigger bet is on governance ](https://digiday.com/media-buying/humans-at-the-helm-agents-in-the-loop-wpp-is-testing-a-buyer-ageny-for-video-but-its-bigger-bet-is-on-governance/)\n\nMarketers are nervous about agentic media buying. WPP is betting governance is the answer.\n\n####\n[\nYahoo DSP is launching an ‘agent network’ ](https://digiday.com/media-buying/yahoo-dsp-is-launching-an-agent-network/)\n\nYahoo positioning itself as an alternative to the industry’s emerging black boxes as part of a 23-partner network.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/stagwell-enhances-its-ai-powered-tools-on-the-media-side", "canonical_source": "https://digiday.com/media-buying/stagwell-enhances-its-ai-powered-tools-on-the-media-side/?utm_campaign=digidaydis&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=general-rss", "published_at": "2026-06-19 04:01:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-19 12:44:23.119609+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-agents", "ai-tools", "ai-infrastructure"], "entities": ["Stagwell", "The Media Machine", "The Machine", "Slavi Samardzija", "Brad Nunn", "Gale", "Assembly", "Forrester"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/stagwell-enhances-its-ai-powered-tools-on-the-media-side", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/stagwell-enhances-its-ai-powered-tools-on-the-media-side.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/stagwell-enhances-its-ai-powered-tools-on-the-media-side.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/stagwell-enhances-its-ai-powered-tools-on-the-media-side.jsonld"}}