New independent agentic ad tech platform pubX has launched in Australia, appointing ad tech veteran Andrew Gilbert as its Country Manager ANZ as it looks to build out its presence across the local advertising market.
Gilbert joins pubX following senior roles at Afterpay, Yahoo and Integral Ad Science (IAS), and most recently ran independent advisory Systems That Decide, helping clients navigate the emerging AI-powered media buying ecosystem.
In his new role, Gilbert will lead pubX’s local operations and establish partnerships with advertisers, agencies and publishers across Australia and New Zealand.
pubX is positioning itself at the emerging intersection of AI and programmatic advertising, with its technology designed to allow independent AI agents to make and execute media trading decisions on behalf of advertisers and publishers.
Unlike conventional programmatic automation, which operates within the commercial rules of a DSP, SSP or other ad tech platform, pubX’s agents are designed to operate independently of a single technology stack.
Gilbert said Australia had historically been a fast follower when it came to ad tech, but was now lagging further behind the US when it came to agentic advertising.
“Australia has traditionally been a fast follower in adtech – perhaps three months behind the US in most areas,” he said.
“But on agentic advertising we are closer to a year behind, with many in the market still grappling with what genuine agentic solutions actually look like.”
Gilbert also warned the industry against simply rebranding existing AI-enabled ad tech as “agentic”.
“My concern is that we are in danger of mistaking an AI interface on an existing adtech platform for genuine agentic advertising,” he said.
“An agent tied to a DSP, SSP or other platform is still operating within that company’s commercial interests.”
According to Gilbert, genuinely independent agents could instead make investment decisions on behalf of buyers and sellers, rather than simply acting as an automated interface for an existing platform.
“These agents act as interns or autopilots for advertisers, they do not make investment decisions or improve the economics of advertising,” he said.
“That is very different from an independent agent acting on behalf of the buyer or seller.”
pubX said it is one of a small number of companies globally to have run campaigns end-to-end, agent-to-agent, after spending the past year developing and deploying its agentic technology.
Its modular AI technology is already being deployed by global publishers, brands and agencies, with campaigns running across multiple international markets.
A key part of the platform’s proposition is also its potential to reduce the number of intermediaries between advertisers and publishers, with pubX claiming this can increase the proportion of advertising spend that reaches working media.
The company said 78 cents of every advertising dollar reached the publisher on campaigns it has run to date, compared with 43 cents on average through the traditional open programmatic supply chain, citing figures from the Association of National Advertisers.
Gilbert said the technology presented an opportunity to rethink the architecture of the programmatic ecosystem, rather than simply adding another layer of technology.
“For the past 15 years, we have added layer after layer to solve problems created within the existing programmatic supply chain,” he said.
“This is the first time an external technology innovation will impact our industry and agentic buying gives us the opportunity to rethink that architecture entirely rather than simply adding another layer.”
Takami Kowalski, pubX Managing Director, APAC, said agentic advertising could have a significant impact on the economics of programmatic advertising.
“Programmatic created enormous scale, but it also introduced layers into the supply chain that have progressively reduced the share of the advertiser dollar reaching publishers,” he said.
“Independent agentic trading gives us an opportunity to reverse some of that – simplifying the transaction and putting more of the value created by advertising back into the hands of the publishers creating the content and audiences.”
Kowalski said Gilbert’s experience across advertising, technology and the Australian media ecosystem would be important as pubX builds out its local operations.
“We’re excited to welcome Andrew to the team. His expertise, relationships and understanding of the Australian media ecosystem will add enormous value as we build partnerships with advertisers, agencies and publishers across the market.”
