Integral Ad Science launches AI assistant with explainable recommendations for brand safety and campaign optimization, rolling out free in Q1 2026.

Integral Ad Science announced on December 16, 2025, the launch of IAS Agent, an artificial intelligence-powered assistant designed to accelerate campaign activation, extract deeper insights from advertising data, and optimize performance at scale. The platform will demonstrate the technology at CES 2026 from January 5-8 and expects to roll it out globally at no additional cost in early Q1 2026.

The announcement positions IAS Agent as a departure from typical AI implementations. According to the company, the tool operates on "explainable AI" principles, providing complete transparency into every recommendation rather than functioning as what IAS characterizes as a "black box" solution. Customers can hover over suggestions within the IAS user interface to access explanations of proposed actions and their rationale, while maintaining control to customize, override, or adopt recommendations.

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"IAS Agent was designed to be a marketer’s advertising compass," said Srishti Gupta, Chief Product Officer at Integral Ad Science. "It guides decisions with clarity and uncovers deep, comprehensive insights that would otherwise remain hidden—turning those insights into action, in real-time, so marketers can boost performance instantly."

The platform leverages what IAS describes as the industry’s most comprehensive dataset, backed by 15 years of proprietary insights. Initial tests demonstrate a 50 percent efficiency improvement in brand safety and suitability settings configuration. The system surfaces campaign performance insights up to five times faster than manual analysis, according to the company’s announcement.

IAS Agent integrates directly into the existing IAS user interface rather than requiring separate platform access. The assistant accepts natural language commands for campaign setup guidance without demanding technical knowledge from users. Recommendations draw from extensive intelligence rather than limited training datasets, according to the company.

The technology enables customers at any expertise level to improve campaign setup and drive performance. Transparent self-reporting shows the reasoning behind each recommendation or action, allowing marketers to confidently explain decisions. The full control and visibility approach lets users customize, override, or adopt recommendations with complete transparency into the AI’s decision-making process.

Automated trend identification across IAS UI dashboards surfaces what’s working and delivers campaign performance insights without manual analysis requirements. The efficiency enhancement features provide AI-generated recommendations for brand safety and suitability settings with minimal input, scaling protection across all investments.

"In today’s complex media landscape, ensuring both brand safety and performance requires a significant investment of time and resources," said Jeff Omoregie, EVP of Unified TAAG at Publicis Media. "IAS Agent meaningfully accelerates that process by uncovering deeper insights and enabling teams to act on them instantly."

The solution builds on IAS’s commitment to responsible AI implementation. The company’s advanced agentic capabilities use Databricks Agent Bricks to deliver enterprise-grade functionality without compromising governance or observability. IAS holds three industry certifications in artificial intelligence: TrustArc Responsible AI, ISO 42001, and certification for Ethical AI by the Alliance for Audited Media.

The launch arrives as advertising platforms merge behind AI agents across the industry. Multiple platforms announced AI agent capabilities throughout 2025, with each implementation addressing different operational challenges within digital advertising workflows.

Amazon launched its Ads Agent on November 11, 2025, automating campaign management tasks across Amazon Marketing Cloud and Multimedia Solutions with Amazon DSP. The agent processes natural language instructions to execute complex advertising workflows, reviewing thousands of audience segments to recommend targeting options while building SQL queries for analytics without requiring coding expertise.

Adobe introduced Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator on September 10, 2025, enabling businesses to manage agents across Adobe and third-party ecosystems. LiveRamp launched agentic orchestration capabilities on October 1, 2025, allowing autonomous AI agents to access identity resolution, segmentation, and measurement tools. Smartclip unveiled its Sidekicks platform in July 2025, combining media intelligence with process automation for specialized AI agents across digital advertising workflows.

The industry faces fundamental questions about whether existing infrastructure can accommodate autonomous AI systems or whether new protocols become necessary. Six companies launched the Ad Context Protocol on October 15, 2025, betting that a new open-source technical standard could enable AI agents to communicate across platforms and execute advertising tasks autonomously. The announcement drew immediate scrutiny from industry observers questioning whether another protocol was needed when existing standards remain underutilized.

Industry expert Ari Paparo published detailed analysis of the protocol on November 3, 2025, expressing support for certain automation capabilities while raising significant concerns about media buying applications. Paparo questioned whether agents could overcome fundamental business problems including pricing transparency resistance, scale economics, and data fragmentation that have historically prevented programmatic direct success.

Gartner predicted in June 2025 that over 40 percent of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027 due to escalating costs, unclear business value, and inadequate risk controls. The research firm’s January 2025 poll of 3,412 webinar attendees revealed uneven investment patterns, with 19 percent reporting significant investments in agentic systems while 42 percent made conservative investments.

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McKinsey’s Technology Trends Outlook 2025 report, published in July 2025, identified 13 frontier technologies that could fundamentally reshape marketing strategies and advertising operations. The analysis positioned agentic AI—artificial intelligence systems capable of autonomous planning and execution—as the most significant emerging trend for marketing organizations. McKinsey data indicated $1.1 billion in equity investment flowed into agentic AI during 2024, with job postings related to the technology increasing 985 percent from 2023 to 2024.

IAS’s brand safety expertise forms the foundation for its AI agent implementation. The company has established measurement partnerships across major platforms, including expanding brand safety measurement to Google’s Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns in June 2024. IAS expanded YouTube brand safety to include misinformation measurement in September 2024, providing advertisers with video-level insights into content adjacent to their advertisements.

The company launched Total Media Quality measurement for Pinterest in September 2024, introducing comprehensive brand safety, suitability, viewability, and invalid traffic measurement. Partnership with Snap brought AI-driven brand safety and suitability measurement to Snapchat’s advertising platform in June 2024. IAS and DoubleVerify expanded brand safety controls on Meta platforms in October 2024, introducing pre-screening content controls for Facebook and Instagram.

The verification industry faces technical scrutiny as measurement methodologies change. The Media Rating Council issued a policy in October 2025 restricting property-level ad verification from brand safety claims, requiring that verification services analyze images, videos, and audio rather than relying solely on text and keyword analysis. This policy change establishes a six-month grace period ending April 18, 2026, after which vendors must comply or lose accreditation.

IAS’s 2026 Industry Pulse Report, released December 8, 2025, surveyed 290 U.S. digital media experts including advertisers, agency professionals, publishers, and ad tech representatives. The research revealed 61 percent of media professionals expressed excitement about AI-generated content opportunities, while 53 percent cited unsuitable adjacencies as their top 2026 challenge. The findings suggest marketers who embrace innovative channels while maintaining strong quality controls will achieve optimal positioning.

The timing of IAS Agent’s launch coincides with Microsoft’s May 14, 2025 announcement that it would discontinue Microsoft Invest (formerly Xandr) effective February 28, 2026. Kya Sainsbury-Carter, Microsoft Advertising corporate vice president, cited incompatibility between traditional demand-side platform models and the company’s vision for "conversational, personalized, and agentic" advertising futures.

IAS Agent aims to unlock value through AI supply path insights, tagging activation, and campaign settings assistance as the technology expands its agentic capabilities. The ongoing innovation reflects what the company describes as commitment to providing advertisers with trusted, transparent, and actionable data needed to drive superior campaign results in what it characterizes as a complex digital landscape.

The ability to instantly surface transparent, data-driven recommendations in real time addresses what Publicis Media’s Omoregie described as opportunities to reduce ad waste and drive stronger performance outcomes for clients and campaigns. The solution targets operational inefficiencies that have historically required significant manual intervention.

Implementation challenges persist despite growing investment momentum. Industry analysis suggests autonomous AI systems could fundamentally alter programmatic advertising infrastructure by automating campaign setup, targeting, and optimization functions currently handled by demand-side platforms. The modern DSP represents one of the most complex software categories, but technological shifts threaten established models through AI-driven alternatives.

Agentic visitors present measurement complications for some publishers. The inability to clearly separate agentic visitors from humans creates concerns among buyers, with some already pulling ad spend. When AI assistants or automated agents visit and read publisher content on behalf of human users, traditional advertising models relying on visual impressions and clicks face structural challenges.

IAS will demonstrate IAS Agent at CES 2026 in early January. The platform expects to make the technology available to all IAS UI customers globally in early Q1 2026 at no additional cost. Contact information for booking CES meeting demonstrations appears in the company’s announcement materials.

The solution distinguishes itself through what IAS characterizes as a marketer-first design philosophy emphasizing accessibility over technical complexity. Any marketer can deliver what the company describes as trusted intelligence that brands rely on to protect multi-million-dollar campaigns and accelerate performance across omnichannel investments.

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Timeline

• June 2024: IAS expanded brand safety measurement to Google’s Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns
• June 25, 2025: Gartner predicted over 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by end of 2027
• July 2025: Smartclip launched Sidekicks agentic AI platform for media industry automation
• July 2025: McKinsey analysis revealed $1.1 billion in agentic AI investment during 2024
• September 10, 2025: Adobe launched Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator for business automation
• October 1, 2025: LiveRamp introduced agentic orchestration capabilities for marketing automation
• October 15, 2025: Six companies launched Ad Context Protocol for advertising automation
• October 24, 2025: Media Rating Council restricted property-level verification from brand safety claims
• November 3, 2025: Industry expert Ari Paparo questioned AdCP media buying protocol for ad automation
• November 4, 2025: Newton Research launched agentic AI analytics within Snowflake for advertising measurement
• November 11, 2025: Amazon launched Ads Agent for automated campaign management
• November 16, 2025: Advertising platforms merged behind AI agents as infrastructure scramble intensified
• December 8, 2025: IAS released 2026 Industry Pulse Report showing cautious AI adoption
• December 16, 2025: IAS announced IAS Agent launch with demonstration scheduled for CES 2026
• January 5-8, 2026: IAS will demonstrate IAS Agent at CES 2026
• Early Q1 2026: IAS expects to roll out IAS Agent globally at no additional cost
• February 28, 2026: Microsoft will discontinue Microsoft Invest (formerly Xandr)
• April 18, 2026: Media Rating Council grace period ends for property-level verification compliance

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Summary

Who: Integral Ad Science (Nasdaq: IAS), a global media measurement and optimization platform, led by Chief Product Officer Srishti Gupta, targeting advertisers, agencies, publishers, and media platforms using IAS’s user interface for campaign management and brand safety protection.

What: IAS Agent is an AI-powered assistant integrated into the IAS user interface that helps customers activate campaigns faster, uncover deeper insights instantly, and optimize performance at scale through explainable AI recommendations. The platform provides transparent self-reporting, full control and visibility over AI decisions, efficiency enhancements for brand safety settings (50% improvement in initial tests), instant insights surfacing campaign performance up to 5x faster, and natural language campaign activation guidance requiring no technical knowledge.

When: Announced December 16, 2025, with demonstration scheduled at CES 2026 from January 5-8, 2026, and expected global rollout to all IAS UI customers in early Q1 2026 at no additional cost.

Where: The technology operates within the existing IAS user interface across all regions where IAS provides services, with headquarters in New York and global availability planned for early Q1 2026.

Why: The launch addresses the significant time and resource investment required to ensure both brand safety and performance in today’s complex media landscape, where advertisers manage multi-million-dollar campaigns across omnichannel investments. IAS Agent responds to growing industry demand for transparent, actionable AI solutions that maintain human oversight while automating manual tasks, distinguishing itself from "black box" AI implementations through explainable recommendations built on 15+ years of proprietary IAS insights and the industry’s most comprehensive dataset. The timing coincides with broader industry movement toward agentic AI capabilities, with $1.1 billion in equity investment flowing into agentic AI during 2024 and job postings increasing 985% from 2023 to 2024, while addressing persistent concerns about AI transparency and accountability in digital advertising.