Linear TV Is Becoming A Live Performance Channel
FOX has put agent-to-agent linear TV buying into live campaigns with WPP, Omnicom, Horizon, Stagwell and Simulmedia. The move gives CMOs a reason to revisit how broadcast budgets are measured, adjusted and approved while campaigns are still running across markets.
FOX Advertising announced on 15 October that WPP, Omnicom, Horizon Media, Stagwell and Simulmedia are using FOX AdStudio for live campaigns and commercial linear television transactions. The rollout moves the broadcaster's agentic advertising system beyond its June demonstration and into day-to-day buying.
The agencies can connect their own systems to dedicated, permissioned FOX accounts. Buyer and seller agents can then exchange plans and transact linear inventory, while FOX and agency teams retain control of key decisions.
What FOX Put Into Live Campaigns
FOX said its upgraded infrastructure includes a governance engine that monitors agent activity for compliance with established protocols. When requested inventory is unavailable, the seller agent can recommend alternatives based on the advertiser's target audience instead of simply dropping the placement.
Jeff Collins, president of FOX Advertising, said the company was now "putting those capabilities to work on live campaigns." WPP Media US chief media officer Susan Schiekofer called live agent-to-agent transactions a "technical milestone" toward responsible use at scale.
The important change is not that software can process an order faster. It is that the system can propose a different media choice inside the transaction, subject to permissions and human review. That shifts part of television planning from a fixed instruction to a governed decision loop.
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Where Agentic Buying Fits In The Market
FOX is not moving alone. IAB Tech Lab updated its Agentic Advertising Management Protocols on 22 September with OpenProposal, a common specification for automating campaign discovery and planning. The framework also supports linear gross rating point transactions and provides buyer and seller reference software.
Amazon renamed its unified advertising platform Amazon Ads Agent on 29 September, adding agentic tools across campaign creation, optimization and analytics. Those moves are broader than television, but they show buyers and sellers building interoperable systems rather than treating AI as a chat interface beside the existing workflow.
IAB Europe's September survey found that 58% of respondents expect agentic ad buying to reach operational use or scale within a year. Yet only 48% had AI guidelines specific to advertising and marketing. FOX's permissioned accounts and governance engine address part of that gap, but each advertiser still has to define what the agent is allowed to optimize.
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Why Linear TV Can Behave More Like Performance Media
Simulmedia chief executive Dave Morgan said the new setup can help advertisers optimize linear campaigns "like digital." He pointed to spot, schedule, flight and audience adjustments informed by outcome data such as web visits, app downloads, calls and purchases.
That is a bigger operational change than automated paperwork. Traditional linear buys have offered broad reach but limited room to respond once a campaign is running. Agent-to-agent connections could make inventory substitution and mid-campaign adjustment a normal part of broadcast planning.
For agencies, this raises the value of measurement design and approval logic while reducing the value of manual transaction handling. For media owners, it creates pressure to make inventory, audiences and commercial rules legible to buyer agents. Neither side can claim differentiation from automation alone.
What CMOs Should Decide Next
APAC marketing leaders should treat the US launch as a workflow test, not a regional performance benchmark. Audience currencies, privacy requirements, broadcast markets and outcome data vary widely across Australia, India, Japan, Southeast Asia and other regional markets.
Before assigning material budget, CMOs should specify the business outcome, acceptable inventory substitutions, pricing boundaries, data sources and decisions that still require human approval. They should also require an audit trail showing what changed, when it changed and which evidence triggered the change.
FOX's rollout suggests linear television may become easier to adjust while a campaign is live. The executive question is no longer whether broadcast can borrow digital buying tools. It is whether marketing teams have measurement and governance strong enough to let those tools make consequential choices.
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