Yes, yes… we get it.
Every AdTech platform’s AI is screaming at us to use it. Switch it on, and you’ll maybe be initially wowed by the AI‑suggested audiences and the helpful bot that claims it can traffic everything from your media plan.
And yet… even with all the AI in the world, nothing really seems to change.
Trafficking teams are still wrist‑deep in spreadsheets. Broadcast bookings are still sent as PDFs for someone to re‑key. Creative still arrives late, in the wrong specs, and without required approvals. Media waits, and clients chase while we’re all quietly adding another “AI pilot” slide to our exec decks.
We’ve ended up with the paradox I see across the region: teams are busier than ever, but campaigns don’t ship any faster.
The common thread? We’ve bolted AI onto broken workflows, instead of fixing the workflows themselves.
What “lipstick on a pig” AI looks like in practice
If you sit in a media agency or broadcaster, you’ve probably seen at least one of these play out:
• A DSP launches a new AI optimisation widget, but your team still spends days manually building line items and uploading tags.
• A creative tool promises “AI‑assisted production”, but assets still arrive at ad ops via Google Sheets, WeTransfer links and guesswork.
• An “AI QA” feature checks files for spec issues… at the very end of the process, when missing a go‑live window is the only lever left.
In each case, AI is a thin layer sitting on top of the same fragmented, manual steps. A more innovative feature within a single point solution doesn’t help much if the real friction lies in the handoffs between systems, teams, and channels.
You’re still juggling separate tools for planning, creative, trafficking and reporting with offshored data entry to keep the whole thing vaguely affordable. Or, duplicate data is keyed into multiple places and version chaos occurs when one promo, product or price changes.
That’s not transformation. That’s cosmetics.
Media agencies don’t need more tools. They need fewer handoffs.
When I talk to agencies, the pain points are remarkably consistent:
• “We spend weeks importing creatives from spreadsheets into platforms.”
• “Assets bounce back and forth between creative and media before they’re even in market.”
• “My team spends more time fixing naming conventions than optimising campaigns.”
The bit that really resonates is not some abstract AI promise. It’s the very unglamorous idea that the publishing and “return path” of assets between creative and media could be appropriately automated.
Imagine not having to manually interpret every media plan to tell creative what to build or chase specs from each publisher and channel. Imagine not having to rebuild campaigns across multiple platforms every time creative updates are needed, or call the creative agency for a minor copy tweak mid‑flight.
For media teams, that’s where the time goes. So THAT’S where the value is if we get AI and automation right.
AI needs to live inside the workflow, not taped to the side
The fundamental shift comes when AI and automation sit at the core of your campaign lifecycle, not as a feature on the edge.
Think about your work in four stages: Plan, Create, Validate, Activate.
Now imagine a single, shared workflow across those stages where:
• A media plan is ingested once, and placements, specs and timings are interpreted and then auto‑brief creative accurately.
• Creative teams work from templates that already “know” the formats, feeds and brand rules for each channel.
• Compliance and spec checks run upstream – on scripts, storyboards and files – so issues are caught before trafficking.
• Once approved, assets and metadata flow directly into buying platforms and broadcaster systems via integrations, not via spreadsheets and re‑keying.
In that world, AI isn’t trying to replace people or magically “do the strategy”. It’s doing the heavy lifting around interpretation, validation and orchestration, with humans in control of the decisions that actually move the needle.
That’s what we mean when we talk about Intelligent Campaign Automation rather than yet another smart widget.
Case in point… A 1990s workflow in a 2025 reality
Nowhere is this more obvious than in TV and BVOD. In Australia today, a lot of TV trading still works like this:
1. The agency fills in a spreadsheet or PDF with budgets, flighting and audience details.
2. That document is emailed to each network.
3. Someone on the broadcaster side manually types it into their sales system – often via an offshore team.
4. Separately, creative files ping around traffic teams, sometimes entirely disconnected from the bookings.
5. At some point close to air date, everyone starts swivel‑chairing between systems to figure out: “Do we have the right spot? Do we have the right commercial? Where is it?”
All of this in a world where planners can buy a YouTube campaign in seconds.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Other markets already use industry‑standard platforms where the entire TV/VOD market trades in one shared environment, with bookings and assets flowing programmatically between agencies and broadcasters.
That’s the kind of step change AI and automation can unlock when the industry moves together – agencies, networks and tech partners – instead of everyone slapping separate AI stickers on their own piece of the chain.
Zoom out before you switch on
Agencies are under relentless pressure to do more with less – flat fees, fragmented channels, rising compliance risk.
The instinct to “do something with AI” is understandable. But randomly switching on bolt‑ons is a costly distraction.
The better move is to zoom out and ask:
• Where does our campaign lifecycle actually grind to a halt?
• Where are we re‑keying the same data, re‑approving the same creative, or rebuilding the same campaigns?
• Which parts must remain human‑led, and which are ripe for intelligent automation?
Fix your lifecycle automation at its core, then power it with AI where it makes the most sense, and suddenly you have an intelligent engine inside a cleaner, simpler system – not lipstick on a pig.
Because in a market where attention is finite, and expectations are rising, your real competitive edge won’t be the number of AI features in your creds deck. It’ll be how intelligently you move from idea to life, across every channel you buy.
Andy Gilroy is VP APAC at Cape.io, an Intelligent Campaign Automation platform that unifies planning, creative, compliance and activation across channels.