Agent washing: thousands of vendors, 130 real agents

Gartner has a word for it: agent washing. Of the thousands of vendors calling themselves "agentic", the firm counts around 130 that genuinely are. The rest rename existing tools (automations, assistants, rules) with the buzzword of the moment.

Media is no exception, and the platforms lead the way. TikTok Smart+ scans your ads and TikTok One creator content to select assets, with a preview of every combination before launch; Symphony dubs your videos into fifty languages and refreshes hooks in one click. Google AI Max rewrites your headlines and expands your URLs. Meta Advantage+ Creative crops your visuals, and Manus, the agent acquired in December, is described by one agency as "bare bones". These are excellent features. They are not agents in the sense I mean, for a simple reason: they optimise for the platform, inside the platform, towards the goals the platform knows how to measure.

A media agent works above the platforms, and for you. It reads Google, Meta and TikTok at the same time. It applies your rules, not theirs. It arbitrates between them, which none of them will do. It reports in MER, not in platform ROAS.

Which raises the build-or-rely question. At mediagentic, I don't rewrite the execution infrastructure: I rely on partners who deploy and run campaigns on every platform, and I build on top what is missing: the plan, the rule framework, the decision log. That is what lets an account start in days rather than months, and lets me choose my partners on proof rather than on labels.

When a vendor tells you "agent", ask one question: who is it optimising for? If the answer is "the platform", it's a feature.