Madhive Brings Agents To Local Ad Markets

Just when you thought you’ve heard enough about how artificial intelligence is going to make everything about business better, the conversation turned to agents, further automating the complex task of turning data into decision.

The agentic trend has been moving into the advertising business and now Madhive is bringing it into local markets. 

Madhive, a demand-side platform designed for local brands and agencies, said it is expanding its Maverick AI to take on agentic capabilities. The company said this is designed to make driving campaign performance more effortless and efficient.

The new group of Maverick AI agents are embedded into the Madhive platform, incorporating local data and insights as campaigns are planned, activated and eventually measured.

“Local advertising has always been performance-driven at its core—defined by execution, accountability, and results,” said Jim Wilson, CEO of Madhive. “With Maverick AI agents embedded directly into our DSP, we’re enabling advertisers to close the loop between insight, activation, and performance in real time—unlocking a new level of efficiency and impact for local campaigns.” 

Madhive introduced its Maverick AI last year. Campaigns using Maverick saw return on ad spending increase by five times and return on investment boosted by two times to four times, the company said.

Madhive says it has trained its agents on proprietary data from its platform, including signals from over 50,000 daily campaigns. The agents learn the ins and out of local media including geographic phenomena, seasonality and pacing dynamics. 

The agents work alongside media teams, driving performance by creating media plans faster using historical performance and audience data, activating campaigns across local inventory and continuously optimizing delivery and budgets in real time.

In addition to its own data, Madhave has created a Model Context Protocol server that enables advertisers to plug their own external large language models into the Madhave DSP. This gives Madhive agents even more relevant data with which to build effective campaigns.

“Insights have always been at the core of how Fox drives performance in local markets,” said Michael Page, senior VP, digital sales at Fox Television Stations, which works with Madhive. “We’re excited that Maverick AI agents will not only enhance that capability, they will fundamentally accelerate it, turning insight into immediate action and performance at scale.” 

Without Real-Time Sales Data, Ad Spending Gets Wasted, Survey Finds

Despite all the talk about measuring outcomes, four out of five marketers said they still don’t have real-time purchase data and must use other signals to optimize campaigns, according to a study from the Affinity Solutions Outcomes Marketing Council.

As a result, 35% say they don’t get the sales results predicted by their campaigns, and more than 60% said at least 11% of their media budgets are wasted. 

Meanwhile, the results reported by platforms are overstated to some degree, according to 91% of those surveyed. 

“Marketing is still optimizing against signals that are too slow, fragmented, and disconnected from actual sales,” said Damian Garbaccio, chief commercial & marketing officer at Affinity Solutions. “That creates enormous systemic waste. The marketers who close the gap between media spend and verified outcomes will have a major competitive advantage.” 

The Outcomes Marketing Council says it surveyed 210 senior marketers for its report, Measurement’s Tipping Point: The Optimization Blueprint for Brand Growth. The council is a collaborative forum that includes execs from DoubleVerify, Circana and Lexitas.

“We’re at an inflection point. The marketers pulling ahead aren’t waiting for better tools. They’re operating on better data,” said Chase Miller, chief growth officer at Claritas. “When verified purchase data drives optimization and AI has deterministic inputs to work with, performance stops being episodic and starts being continuous. That’s the opportunity in front of every marketer today.”