Who’s actually doing the buying now

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Who's actually doing the buying now?

May 15, 2026

Seventeen years ago this month, I attended my first TV upfronts as a brand-new buyer. I met the entire cast of "How I Met Your Mother" while still trying to figure out what media buying actually was.

The TV upfronts were again held in New York this week. Around the same time, OpenAI quietly opened ChatGPT's self-serve ad platform to any U.S. business that wants to sign up. No agency required, no $50K minimum, just five minutes to launch a campaign.

These two events look unrelated, but they're not. The mechanics of media buying are getting automated on both ends of the spectrum, which means the work that matters most - the strategy, the judgment, the question of what to buy and why - just got more important, not less.

Bottom line: the media industry as a whole is still defining what media buying actually is. Here's what you need to know.

Trend 1: No more "wait and see" at ChatGPT

Two months ago, we wrote that brands should watch, wait and be ready if and when minimums drop. We still stand by that claim. The original $50K minimum priced many out, and the brands that did get in were frustrated. CNBC reported in March that agency partners at WPP, Omnicom and Dentsu couldn't even spend their committed budgets because OpenAI was rolling out so slowly. Ads were reaching only about 5% of ChatGPT mobile users by mid-March.

Then May 5 happened. OpenAI dropped the minimum, launched a self-serve Ads Manager, added CPC bidding and more. The question stopped being "Should we try it?" and became "What specific category of conversation do we want to show up in?"

The thing you're buying inside ChatGPT isn't a keyword. It's a moment of context. Which is, frankly, the thing every media buyer is perma-chasing. Someone asking "What's a good gift for a 4-year-old who's into building things?" is at a fundamentally different decision point than someone typing "Lego sets" into Google. The audience strategy is different. Treating this like Google Ads with a new logo is the fastest way to waste your test budget.

The Pulse

• Figure out where to test first: A small, focused test in one specific high-intent category is reasonable now. If the answer from your team is "we want to be everywhere" or "let's wait longer," push back. You want a clear, narrow place to start.
• Your search creative won't work here: The unit you're buying is conversational context, not keywords. Make sure your creative flows accordingly and you're writing for conversational platforms.
• The big four are already in: Dentsu, Omnicom, Publicis and WPP are all formal partners. If you're working with one and they haven't raised this in the last week, that's a conversation worth having.

OUR TAKE

The bigger thing this signals isn't that ChatGPT is just a new ad channel. It's that the unit of media is shifting from keyword-on-a-page to context-in-a-conversation. The hard part isn't going to be how to buy it. It's going to be what to say inside the conversation, and how to know if it worked. The teams that figure that out in the next two quarters will have a real advantage when CPCs eventually rise … because they will.

Trend 2: The upfronts are quietly becoming an AI story

Back to those upfronts! The most human event in advertising (IMO). Long lunch negotiations and handshake deals worth tens of millions of dollars made on relationships built over the years. The "HIMYM" cast working the room (or perhaps, now, "Summer House"?).

Which makes what just happened sort of remarkable. Earlier this year, NBCUniversal led the first agent-to-agent media buy that included live NFL playoff inventory. Don't worry: Humans on all sides set the strategy and approved the final terms. But the actual brokering - on live football, on linear TV - was software talking to software. And it's not just NBCU. IAB Tech Lab released a roadmap for agentic buying standards.

Which means the human work, knowing your business, knowing the marketplace, knowing what actually moves the needle for this brand and not a different one matters more, not less.

The Pulse

• Agentic buying is no longer a Consumer Electronics Show panel topic: It's a live transaction. AI agents are executing real media buys on real inventory, including live sports on linear TV.
• The upfront questions are changing: "What's my GRP guarantee?" is becoming "What outcome are we contracted to deliver?" If you're sitting in upfront conversations and the answer is still in impressions, you're a year behind.
• Agentic infrastructure is leveling the playing field: The NBCU pilot ran with an independent shop, not a holding company. For mid-size agencies, that's significant. The last decade of consolidation didn't tilt things their way, and this is a good sign.

OUR TAKE

People still matter, but our role continues to be challenged and sharpened. We know AI is buying TV, but the point here is that AI is now buying TV at the upfronts, the most ceremonial, relationship-heavy moment in the entire media calendar. Which mostly tells me that the parts of the job that matter most - the strategy, the marketplace knowledge, the judgment - are getting more visible.

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About the authors

Ashley Blais leads the Brand side of FINN Paid Media, our global team of experts who live and breathe today's fast-paced - and fast-changing - media landscape.

The team delivers a full suite of services, including omnichannel planning and buying, performance media strategy and management, and comprehensive measurement, resulting in award-winning campaigns that drive client success.

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POSTED BY: Ashley Blais