To no one’s surprise, conversations at POSSIBLE 2026 in Miami centered on artificial intelligence.
But conversations on the ground went beyond the typical talking points about how much time and money AI can save. AdExchanger had one of those deeper discussions about AI with Domenic Venuto, the indie agency Horizon Media’s chief product and data officer. Venuto addressed the impact of AI on the shifting business dynamics between agencies and marketers.
Horizon uses AI to centralize different parts of media buying, from audience planning and targeting to measurement and strategy. That centralization helps Horizon and its clients quickly collaborate using the same technology, which removes the need to field client questions to the right subject matter experts across disparate teams that exist within an agency, Venuto told AdExchanger during POSSIBLE.
By “removing the lag between question and answer,” he said, AI can help “reclaim the mantra of [agencies] being strategic partners” rather than vendors for marketers.
That rationale is why Venuto joined Horizon in late 2024, after some time away from Agency Land. Venuto got his start on the buy side at Razorfish before Publicis Groupe acquired the agency. At Razorfish, Venuto met Bob Lord, who then became CEO. Venuto and Lord, now the president of Horizon Media Holdings, rejoined the agency world at roughly the same time to lead Horizon alongside CEO and founder Bill Koenigsberg.
Venuto sat down with AdExchanger at the Fontainebleau in Miami to unpack the role of AI in today’s media and advertising landscape.
AdExchanger: AI is a hot topic, but there’s still some fear and scrutiny regarding its impact on creativity and work. As an industry, how should we be thinking about the pros and cons of AI?
Domenic Venuto: Everyone is very excited about AI, but as a population, we’re still acclimating to AI and figuring out how it should be used. For example, there’s an entire generation [Gen Alpha] that has never known a world without social media and cell phones. For that generation, AI-generated content and ad creatives represent a new normal.
This acclimatization period of AI in media may take another decade. So as an industry, we still have time to course-correct and establish new standards for AI that balance technology with the human element before the youngest generation comes to accept AI slop as creative. Whichever ways we use AI, human ingenuity and trust is absolutely necessary.
What are use cases where AI can drive both innovation and business?
At Horizon Media, my job is to create AI tools for our internal teams as well as for clients. The innovation behind creating AI tools that drive efficiency and results is why I came back into the agency world to work with Bob [Lord] and Bill [Koenigsberg].
AI allows for a degree of collaboration that hasn’t happened in at least two decades.
For example, when I was on the business development team at Razorfish, we were working with the C-suite as strategic advisors to guide them on how to bring siloed departments and teams together. But when Publicis acquired Razorfish, we lost a level of strategic access to clients and decisionmakers; instead, we were managed by the procurement team, focused on KPIs closely tied to media performance.
Fast forward to now, we’re having those strategic conversations with advertisers to help them navigate fragmentation.
Speaking of consolidation, has anything changed about how Horizon Media is competing with agency holding companies since the Omnicom-IPG megamerger?
We continue to compete by approaching business as personal. We act as co-collaborators with clients, making us an alternative model to the agency holdco. This cultural alignment resonates with clients as well as our candidate pool, which includes people from our holdco peers.
Within the scope of ad tech, what are the challenges marketers are experiencing with AI?
While AI produces more options for marketers in terms of ad products and campaign workflows, it also creates challenges such as fragmentation.
For example, we talk about AI search as another ad channel, including agentic buying happening within search channels. Fragmentation is a real issue when marketers are trying to maximize return on investment for every media dollar. It is overwhelming. Technology is positioned as a solve for all these challenges, but in many cases, it added a lot of complexity.
As a consumer and reporter, I notice that AI paradox of creating efficiencies and obstacles at the same time. Is this paradox par for the course for emerging technologies, or is there something the industry should be doing differently?
It’s somewhat par for the course. As an industry, we’re at the vanguard of a new trend. AI represents a technological force of change, following previous technological changes we’ve gone through. The ad industry evolved from web and display to mobile to social media to connected TV. All these technological shifts followed similar patterns of behavior, but they’ve gotten shorter and faster. AI has been so profound in the speed of its impact.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
For more articles featuring Domenic Venuto, click here.
