We’ve spent decades trying to make digital advertising smarter. Cookies, pixels, and data exchanges promised personalization but delivered clutter, tracking fatigue, and declining returns. Then came AI, bringing the chance not just to improve ads, but to completely reimagine how brands and audiences interact.
In this episode of The Media Copilot, host Pete Pachal sits down with Michael Rubenstein, CEO of Firsthand and one of the original architects of modern ad tech. After helping launch DoubleClick’s Ad Exchange (later acquired by Google), Rubenstein is now building something that feels like the opposite of programmatic advertising, a world where brand “agents” don’t just target you, but talk to you.
Instead of static banners or pre-rolls, these AI-driven brand agents act like adaptive digital representatives that can engage, inform, and even create content on the fly. They’re built to live anywhere: inside a publisher’s story, across a retailer’s site, or inside your own chat interface, meeting the consumer wherever they are and responding in real time to what they actually want.
It’s a massive shift in mindset: from broadcasting to conversation, from impressions to intent. And it’s forcing both marketers and media companies to rethink what it means to build relationships in the age of intelligent systems.
The old web vs the adaptive web
Rubenstein describes today’s web as an aging ecosystem still hooked on guesswork. Advertisers chase data trails to infer what consumers might want, while publishers rent out their real estate to fill programmatic slots that too often miss the mark.
With brand agents, that dynamic flips. Rather than scraping or spying, these agents invite consumers to engage. Once someone interacts, the AI tailors the experience, whether that’s helping them find a mortgage, compare products, or understand a brand’s sustainability practices. No cookies. No personal data. Just an adaptive, AI driven dialogue that values transparency and utility.
The result, Rubenstein says, “...it’s higher engagement across the board, four to five times more interaction than traditional ads, and dramatically longer dwell times.” But beyond performance, the model seems to introduce something far more valuable: insight. Each engagement becomes a real time pulse of what audiences actually care about, effectively turning every campaign into an ongoing research lab.
Why this matters
As AI intermediaries like ChatGPT and Perplexity start filtering how we discover content, brands and publishers risk becoming invisible behind a wall of generative summaries. Firsthand’s mission, Rubenstein argues, is to ensure that brands remain present and differentiated, that they can engage with audiences directly rather than being flattened into someone else’s dataset.
“AI should be a communications medium,” he says, “not just a back end tool for efficiency.”
That philosophy underpins a new kind of digital ecosystem, one where ownership, authenticity, and conversation replace the cold calculus of clicks and impressions.
For publishers, this model offers a lifeline. Instead of losing ground to third-party aggregators, they can embed intelligent, contextual experiences within their own environments. For consumers, it means less interruption and more relevance, an internet that feels curated for your intent, not your identity.
What we cover
• How Firsthand’s “brand agent” platform turns ads into interactive, conversational experiences
• Why this approach eliminates invasive tracking and relies on real time intent signals
• The implications for publishers as their owned media becomes “AI-adaptive”
• What happens when personal consumer agents start interacting with brand agents
• The metrics of engagement in this new paradigm
• The cultural and ethical stakes of rebuilding advertising around AI conversations
Is the future of advertising agents?
AI is dismantling the old walls of the internet. The question isn’t whether advertising, publishing, and media will change, it’s whether they can evolve fast enough to shape that change rather than be consumed by it.
Rubenstein’s vision of the agent driven Internet suggests a world where intelligence becomes the new interface, where content, commerce, and conversation blur into a single adaptive flow. The future, in his words, “isn’t programmatic, it’s personal.”
For marketers and publishers ready to lead rather than react, that’s not a threat. It’s an opening.
This post was drafted with AI and then carefully edited by Media Copilot editors.
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Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele Musso
Edited by the Musso Media Team
Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0
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