Spekk acquires Pablo to build specialist AI for high-consideration brands

This move signals a shift from horizontal AI automation to verticalized, high-logic media buying stacks. As generic AI tools prioritize immediate ROAS—often penalizing high-consideration brands with longer conversion cycles—agencies must build custom intelligence that understands complex attribution. For the streaming ecosystem, this highlights a growing divergence between mass-market programmatic buying and specialized performance marketing for luxury or high-involvement goods. The integration of creative ops (Ad Traffic Control) with media buying (Pablo) suggests that the next phase of ad tech is not just faster execution, but more contextualized automation for fragmented buyer journeys. Watch for how this specialized agentic approach impacts CPM and conversion benchmarks for premium DTC advertisers on CTV and social platforms.

The move toward agentic marketing systems comes as the agency landscape faces a significant 'AI-washing' crisis. Per The Guardian in May 2026, UK-based PR and communications executives have complained of 'yoga-level' stretches, where companies rebrand basic automation as generative intelligence to capitalize on venture capital interest. This trend has led to increased skepticism among brand marketers, with industry reports from FutureWeek in late 2025 suggesting that agencies must move from simple automation to 'anticipation' and 'crafted AI' to retain client trust.

Simultaneously, the technical barrier for media buying is shifting. According to the 2026 IAB Outlook Study, 38% of buyers now cite understanding generative AI as a primary investment challenge, a 14-point increase from two years prior. This knowledge gap is being met by agentic AI architectures that, per research in the Journal of Advances in AI (2025), can reduce task completion times by over 34% compared to traditional manual workflows. Major players are also moving toward 'closed-loop' environments; in January 2026, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that their internal AI systems now optimize creative and budgets more effectively than human-led teams in standard scenarios.

For high-consideration brands, however, standard scenarios are insufficient. As highlighted by Harvard Business Review in February 2026, AI is fundamentally compressing the customer journey, forcing brands to optimize for 'AI mediators' rather than just search engines. Spekk's acquisition reflects a broader market realization that as AI becomes the primary gatekeeper for consumer discovery, specialized data shepherds are required to manage the nuance of strategic priority and long-term brand equity over simple click-through volume.