AdGentic Podcast & Newsletter launches – Advertising in the age of AI agents
Kiri Masters launches AdGentic, a podcast and newsletter focused on advertising inside AI agents (ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.). As AI agents become shopping intermediaries, brands that don't understand this ad layer risk being invisible at the new point of purchase.
This is early-stage AI disruption of retail media — the same consolidation dynamic that let Amazon dominate search ads is now repeating inside AI agents, compressing the window for brands to establish organic and paid presence before costs spike.
AI agents are becoming the next search bar — and they will have sponsored placements that influence what products they recommend, possibly without user awareness. Sellers who wait to understand this channel will face the same disadvantage as those who ignored Sponsored Products in 2016.
Operational Impact
This story may require teams to revisit workflows, monitoring, or platform assumptions.
Bottom Line
AI agents are the next ad frontier — early movers will own the placement.
Source Lens
Industry Context
Useful background context, but lower-priority than direct platform, community, or operator intelligence.
Impact Level
low
AI agents are the next ad frontier — early movers will own the placement.
Key Stat / Trigger
No single quantitative trigger surfaced in this report.
Focus on the operational implication, not just the headline.
Full Coverage
For years we’ve grappled with adverts, given them fancy names like Retail Media and Performance Marketing (or on marketplaces they’ve been dubbed Sponsored or Promoted products and listings), but now a new vista is opening up – Ads in your favourite AI Agents.
It’s going to happen, and as Kiri Masters, host of AdGentic – a brand show and newsletter on advertising in the age of AI agents – says the enshittification of AI agents is upon us.
(And if you don’t know the term it’s briefly how a great consumer experience is lessoned with ads and eventually the advertisers themselves are tapped for more and more money until everyone hates the platform but carries on using it anyway.)
So here’s the problem that Kiri lays out – we don’t have to suffer ads if we’re willing to pay for subscriptions and use of a platform, but if you’re like me you either refuse to pay or refuse to pay enough – that’s why we accept advertising because effectively they’re paying the bills so that we can use the tools for free.
But we hate ads because they’re often entirely not relevant to our lives. I don’t have kids so showing me spotty kids needing acne cream isn’t ever going to engage me – linear TV has this massive problem that so many people have spotty kids that advertisers spurt their content into my favourite shows and there’s no real solution to this.
Amazon is a bit better, they have an idea of what I might be interested based on past purchases, but an AI Agent knows so much more about me, so maybe this time around the ads might actually be relevant and welcomed!
Kiri summed it up perfectly: Enshittification is coming, but hopefully it’s less shitty this time – Kiri Masters, host, AdGentic And of course there’s a dark side to AI Agents….
sure there might be ads I see and even happily engage with, but will there be ads that influence what my AI Agent shows me in the first place without me even being aware of what’s going on behind the scenes?
This is why subscribing to AdGentic is a must – Few people have thought harder about where retail media goes next than Kiri and she is one of the few experts that really knows what Retail Media is all about. Subscribe today, because tomorrow or some day soon you’ll be wanting to place ads on AI Agents and you’ll want to be up to speed!
Subscribe to AdGentic Once subscribed, you’ll get access to all essays and podcasts – if you’re in Retail Media then you’ll want to be at the leading edge of AI Agent advertising, because if you’re not your competitors will be!
Monitor which AI agents are already surfacing your product category (test ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews now) — if competitors appear and you don't, this is your early warning.
In the next 30 days, audit your product content for AI-readability: structured data, detailed descriptions, and Q&A content are the signals AI agents pull from when making recommendations.
Original Source
This briefing is based on reporting from Tamebay. Use the original post for full primary-source context.
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