New agentic ad tech platform pubx launches, appoints Andrew Gilbert as Country Manager. Published on: 10th September 2026 at 9:30 AM 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." Join more than 30,000 advertising industry experts Get all the latest advertising and media news direct to your inbox from B&T.

Nielsen's $2 billion DoubleVerify acquisition is a big play for CMOs. 12.08.2026 CMOs: Get ready to field more sales pitches from Nielsen. The TV ratings giant surprised the ad industry by announcing plans to buy DoubleVerify for $2.15 billion - and sent chins wagging with hot takes about the implications. At stake: trustworthy data. CMOs depend on data to craft their strategies, but it's often patchy and unreliable. That's why they need credible auditors to double-check - or double-verify, if you will - those numbers. For CMOs, this deal could simplify audience measurement and ad verification, but consolidation would mean greater concentration of power under Nielsen and one fewer independent player. Eric Salama, former CEO of data firm Kantar, told me the deal signals Nielsen's intent to move further into helping CMOs plan and allocate their media budgets. That, in turn, would mean building more direct relationships with advertisers rather than primarily serving media owners and agencies. "As an advertiser, when you think about attribution and planning, you don't think of Nielsen, really," Salama said. Building a single measurement currency. DoubleVerify made its name helping advertisers ensure their digital ads are viewable, free of fraud, and served alongside suitable content. It has since expanded into the ad performance space, in areas like campaign optimization and outcomes measurement. DoubleVerify CEO Mark Zagorski said in a statement that the combo would deliver "a single currency that scores media on both audience delivery and media environment quality." A single currency also means placing faith in a single referee to determine what constitutes "quality" media. In acquiring DoubleVerify, Nielsen would own both the tools that measure an advertiser's reach and those that test the purity of their media buys, Nomad Foods CMO Justin Billingsley wrote on LinkedIn. "Together they are the two facts that let a buyer trust what a seller claims, and from 2027 they will sit inside a single private company whose own accounts nobody outside can read," Billingsley said. DoubleVerify, previously publicly traded, will retain its name and separate corporate structure as part of Nielsen, which is privately held. (No NielsenVerify yet!) That separation might ease some concerns about potential conflicts, but it could also make the benefits of the combination harder for advertisers to see - at least in the short term. Ad measurement goes private. Once the deal closes, expected next year, there'll be even less public financial scrutiny of the ad measurement space as DoubleVerify exits the public markets. Nielsen itself has been privately owned by a private equity consortium since 2022. Meanwhile, DoubleVerify's closest rival, Integral Ad Science, was taken private by PE firm Novacap last year. The not-so-small matter of integrating the two companies once the deal closes could open the door for rivals to pounce, touting their independence. "Mediaocean and Peer39 will be interesting to watch," said Jay Friedman, cofounder of the adtech and martech discovery platform CartographAI, referring to measurement rivals that could take advantage. Will Luttrell, the former CTO of DoubleVerify rival IAS, said that while conventional wisdom sometimes holds that private equity is where innovation goes to die, the opposite can also be true. "It's an opportunity to make the longer-term bets and bigger swings that quarterly earnings scrutiny may not allow," Luttrell, who now runs the cybersecurity startup Honeycake, told me. IAS, for example, hired Lidiane Jones as its CEO last month. "They are replacing someone with a revenue background in the top chair with a bona fide software engineer," Luttrell said of the new IAS CEO. "It's hard to maintain long-term success without a technical person in the top chair, especially in a competitive industry that requires constant reinvention like adtech." Marketers have spent years trying to make fragmented measurement systems work better together so they can understand both who their ads reached and whether those impressions were actually valuable. Nielsen-DoubleVerify promises some of the unification marketers are looking for, but the trade-off is a bigger reliance on a single company to provide it.