The Prediction Economy: Rebuilding Media & Advertising on an Open Data & AI Foundation
The media, advertising, and marketing industries are undergoing a fundamental shift: from an economy built on capturing attention to one built on predicting business outcomes. The companies leading this shift are no longer just media and ad businesses. They’re becoming technology companies, with data and AI at the center of how they operate.
In this webinar, Databricks and IAB Tech Lab will unpack what this shift means for the industry and why open standards are more important now than ever. We’ll start with Databricks’ origins as an open-format data and AI platform and explain why that foundation aligns naturally with IAB Tech Lab’s mission to build open, interoperable standards across the ad tech ecosystem.
From there, we’ll walk through our thesis on the prediction economy: why the ability to forecast outcomes, not just capture attention, is becoming the defining advantage in media and advertising, and what it actually takes to compete in this new landscape.
The session will close with live demos showing how the ecosystem is building on Databricks as the brain layer of their data and AI estate, including:
- Agentic Media Buying & Selling. How autonomous agents are starting to transact media on behalf of buyers and sellers.
- Agentic Ad Sales. How AI agents are changing the way sales teams identify, package, and close inventory.
- Measuring Outcomes. How a unified data and AI foundation supports more accurate, predictive measurement of what’s actually driving business impact.
This session is designed for both executives and practitioners. Executives will walk away with a clear strategic view of where the industry is headed and how to position their organization for what’s next. Practitioners will get concrete, actionable next steps for putting these capabilities to work, from evaluating agentic workflows to strengthening measurement approaches.