When Comcast released its self-serve Universal Ads platform earlier this year, it included an ads API with the goal of making CTV ads accessible to small businesses, just like search and social media ad buying.
Now, other ad tech developers are incorporating the API into their products and workflow. Like Brand Networks, which on Monday announced that Universal Ads would now be buyable through the company’s agentic ad buying platform, Aimy Ads.
Released in July of this year, Aimy is also a product built primarily for small and local businesses.
In addition to Universal Ads, Aimy – which was named (with permission!) after the company’s VP of media services, Amy Slife Mullins – is integrated with major social, search and programmatic platforms, including Meta, TikTok and Google.
Brand Networks does support integrations with other major sources of CTV inventory, like The Trade Desk, with some of its products for enterprise clients. But the price point and availability of Universal Ads inventory makes it a better choice for SMBs, said CEO Mike Garsin.
“Even our own media buying team has been testing it out for some of our customers, and they’re impressed by the price,” Garsin said.
Baby’s first CTV campaign
Aimy is a product that operates on platforms with their own self-serve ad-buying capabilities, such as Google. But for some SMB owners – like Garsin’s own father, who runs a UPS store in Florida – managing individual accounts without any prior digital ad experience is confusing, if not overwhelming.
To that end, Aimy was designed to consolidate the ad-buying process and guide the user through the experience. The Claude-powered AI agent (although it can be run on other LLMs as well, said Garsin) recommends channels, campaign dates and budgets, and can offer multiple choice prompts.
For example, during a live demonstration, the Aimy platform generated buttons that included several suggestions about which types of audiences to target. This function is basic, Garsin noted, but helpful for users who are totally unfamiliar with business software interfaces.
Once the user uploads creative assets and connects the necessary ad account (meaning they already need to have a login on Universal Ads to begin with), the human still must review the agent’s output. Then they can launch the campaign directly through Aimy with a button click.
Garsin said it’s too early to tell if Aimy also improves campaign metrics – although initial testing with Brand Networks’ other clients, including larger enterprise companies, suggests that’s the case.
However, Brand Networks will still consider Aimy to be a success if it makes digital ad buying easier overall, particularly where CTV is concerned, he said.
Furthermore, because of how Aimy is structured, there’s an “educational component” to the platform, Garsin said. As novice users engage with the agent, they’ll learn more about the media buying process through follow-up questions and summaries generated by the product.
Ads ex machina
Beyond its new integration with Universal Ads, Brand Networks is developing agentic plug-ins for YouTube and LinkedIn, and is also working with a yet-to-be-named partner on a tool that can develop AI-generated creative assets.
Because, despite all the consternation and hubbub over “AI slop” content, small businesses are still curious about using it to develop their own creative campaigns cheaply, according to Garsin.
“It’s something that they’re interested in, if they can get it at the right price point for both production and placement,” he said. “And if they think it will help their businesses from an awareness standpoint.”
