AI Agent Ads Open a New Brand Safety Battleground

Advertisers are beginning to experiment with ads designed to influence AI agents rather than human consumers. The practice opens a new brand safety battleground and has sparked a fierce industry debate.

The core question: Once the AI platforms realize brands are advertising to their crawlers, will they allow it or try to block it?

Here is how the ads work. Adtech startup Mobian recently worked with publisher Time to serve "Agent Ads" for brands including Ally Bank and the Project Management Institute. Time had earlier created stripped-down, text-only versions of its webpages that AI agents could read more efficiently. Time then directed AI crawlers to read those pages rather than the normal ones with images and design elements. Now Time is placing ads on those pages. The ads render as blocks of FAQ-like text about the brand, optimized for AI bots to ingest.

Ally Bank CMO Andrea Brimmer told Business Insider she was quick to experiment because "the signals are impossible to ignore." Consumers visiting Ally's website from AI platforms were 3.5 times more likely to open an account than those from traditional search, and its AI-driven traffic is up 9 times year over year, she said.

"When the way people discover brands is shifting fundamentally that fast, I'd rather be in the room helping shape what comes next than standing outside it," Brimmer said.

The experiment has drawn criticism. Critics argue this could be the start of a legitimate new channel or the next black-hat arms race. If bad actors spin up their own agent ad networks, they could push scams or manipulate AI recommendations against competitors. The industry will need to move quickly to establish standards before AI companies simply start blocking them as spam.

There is a reputational risk if brands surreptitiously put their thumb on the scale. The industry has been here before. Bell Pottinger became a cautionary tale in the early 2010s after an investigation found the PR firm had covertly edited clients' Wikipedia pages to present them in a favorable light.

"When the backlash comes, and it will come fast and furious, do you want to be the poster child for that backlash?" Bernard Urban, of the consulting firm BSCI, told Business Insider.

PMI CMO Menaka Gopinath said AI raises questions about transparency and the sources of information. She said she appreciated how Time and Mobian approached the pilot, ensuring sponsored content was clearly labeled.

"Organizations, publishers, and technology providers all have a role to play in building that trust," Gopinath said.

The most popular AI platforms have said in their policies and public statements that ads don't influence their answers. This language appears to refer to the ads they run within their own chatbots rather than ads on websites targeted at their crawlers.

Mobian CEO Jonah Goodhart said that, broadly speaking, AI models are influenced by advertising.

"Models are trained on what people write, publish, and discuss, and advertising shapes both culture and the broader public record," said Goodhart, an adtech veteran who sold his previous startup, Moat, to Oracle (ORCL). Oracle's Alpha Score currently sits at 46, reflecting mixed market sentiment.

Mobian provides what Goodhart describes as "clearly labeled, brand-verified facts, backed by sources." How much weight the agent gives that information depends on the question and the credibility of those sources, he said.

Brimmer said every new technology brings new responsibility. She said each ad aimed at LLM bots goes through the same legal and compliance reviews as everything it puts in front of people.

"I think there is a far greater brand safety risk in not paying attention to what LLMs are telling people every day about your company," Brimmer said.

The debate is not settled. The industry will have to decide whether agent ads are a legitimate channel or a practice that invites blocking. For now, some brands are already placing bets.