36% of marketing work automated by 2028. In media, it's already done.

Gartner surveyed 402 chief marketing officers between August and October 2025. Their estimate: 16% of marketing work is automated by AI in 2026, and it will be 36% in 2028. More than double in two years. Four CMOs in five add that their teams' fear is a brake on experimentation.

That figure is an average across all of marketing — content, CRM, research, events. In media operations, nobody is waiting for 2028. Take inventory of what a platform already does on its own.

Bidding: Smart Bidding at Google, campaign budget optimisation at Meta, auto-bidding at TikTok. Targeting: Performance Max no longer takes keywords but search themes; Advantage+ ignores your audiences to read your creative; Smart+ picks its own segments. Placement: PMax decides between Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps; Advantage+ Placements does the same across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and the Audience Network. Creative: AI Max rewrites your headlines, Advantage+ Creative reframes your visuals, Symphony at TikTok dubs your videos into fifty languages. Amazon has its Performance+.

In other words, set-up, optimisation and a growing share of production have already left human hands. In media, Gartner's 36% is a number from the past.

What is not automated, and won't be by the platforms — because it isn't in their interest — is the arbitration between them. How much to Google, how much to Meta, how much to nothing at all. When to stop a campaign the platform rates as excellent. What ROAS margin to accept to win a customer rather than a conversion.

That judgment is what agencies don't know how to bill, because it doesn't come in hours. It's precisely what mediagentic sells, while letting the agents do the rest.