RTB House

Brands Navigate the Agency Ecosystem and AI Trust Issues

Hello Partner's newsletter (2026-08-18) examines how brands navigate a growing and complex agency ecosystem, citing Agency by Agency data that the UK agency sector nearly doubled in ten years and highlighting brands' desire for strong relationships, cross-channel expertise, and human touch. The edition also covers Anthropic's new AI content watermark in response to EU regulations, emerging research on consumer trust in LLMs and creators, and a Wall Street Journal piece by Katie Deighton on brands engaging Reddit communities and moderator pushback.

What Does a Retargeting Company Actually Deliver? Measuring Value Beyond Clicks

Choosing a retargeting company is a major decision in digital advertising, yet many businesses still judge performance by the metric least connected to revenue. In this article, we explain what retargeting companies actually do, why clicks are a misleading measure of success, and how to compare retargeting platforms so that campaigns are evaluated on real marketing ROI, not vanity metrics.

Consumers Warm to Agentic AI Purchases

A new RTB House survey of more than 1,800 consumers across the U.S., U.K., Japan and France finds growing consumer openness to agentic AI handling purchases, while many still want human oversight. In the U.S., respondents said AI tools broaden options and help discover brands; 42% said AI extends decision time and 59% credited AI with highlighting brands they didn’t know. Some consumers — especially older cohorts — prefer a human to review transactions before an AI agent completes purchases. The article also cites Amazon CEO Andy Jassy saying 350+ million customers used Alexa for Shopping in the past year and notes McKinsey & ICSC project U.S. agentic commerce could reach $1 trillion by 2030.