Observed Signal · Oct 27, 2026 · Podcast · Source: AdExchanger · Impact: 2/5 · Sentiment: Neutral
Kovva COO Talks AI Agents for Media Buying
In a podcast interview with AdExchanger, Tanja Mimica, COO and co-founder of agentic AI startup Kovva, discusses how AI agents can automate the manual, cross-platform workflows of media buyers. Kovva's agents integrate with around 50 tools including DSPs, social platforms, and verification partners, allowing buyers to receive automated briefings and gradually delegate tasks. Mimica emphasizes that while platforms like Meta and The Trade Desk optimize their own systems, the majority of a buyer's work happens between platforms, an area Kovva targets. The company maintains human oversight by requiring approval for all write actions and setting guardrails outside the agents. Kovva was founded to tackle the reconciliation, QA, and troubleshooting tasks that remain unautomated. Mimica also shares her career journey from veterinary practice to ad tech.
The article highlights a growing trend of agentic AI in media buying, but it is a podcast interview rather than a major product announcement or industry shift.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- Kovva is an agentic AI startup focused on automating media buying workflows.
- Kovva's AI agents integrate with around 50 tools including DSPs, social platforms, and verification partners.
- All write actions by Kovva agents require human approval.
- Tanja Mimica is COO and co-founder of Kovva.
- Kovva was founded to automate manual tasks between ad platforms.
Connected Companies & Entities
4 Entities mapped“Agentic AI startup Kovva, co-founded by Tanja Mimica, builds AI agents to automate media buying workflows.”
“Meta is building AI to optimize its own ad platform.”
“Meta is building AI to optimize its own ad platform.”
“The Trade Desk is building AI to optimize its own platform.”
Ontology Mapping & Concepts
Related Market Signals & Shifts
Recent verified developments and strategic activity across this market segment.
AI Agents Automate Media Buying Busywork
Kovva, a new AI ad tech startup founded by four ex-PubMatic executives, exited closed beta on May 18, 2026 and is offering agent-based automation to handle operational media-buying tasks. Its agents integrate with DSPs, ad servers, social platforms and measurement tools (about 50 integrations reported) to perform quality assurance checks, reconcile cross-platform reporting discrepancies, suggest budget reallocations using attribution outputs, detect creative fatigue, and draft client responses for human approval. Kovva emphasizes a translation layer that normalizes naming conventions and structures across platforms so agents can act across systems. The company is self-funded, currently staffed by the four co-founders, plans to hire engineers in the coming months and aims to raise external capital in late summer 2026.
AdTech Platform Launches Four AI Advertising Agents
An ADZINE interview with Sara Sihelnik describes a recent rollout of four specialized AI agents for digital advertising. The agents are user-facing and designed to act as interactive partners for marketers: a central chat-based strategic co-pilot called "Agent Q" and three specialist agents for causal analysis, audience-pattern discovery, and creative (display/native) scoring. The architecture embeds specialists contextually within a single interface where Agent Q orchestrates communication and data exchange. The platform emphasizes a human-on-the-loop governance model (humans define KPIs, budgets and brand guidelines), real-time data inputs from campaign signals and the open web, and explainability to surface the data behind unusual recommendations. Sihelnik also warns that chat-first ecosystems (e.g., Perplexity, Open AI) risk shrinking the open web unless publishers and tools match walled-garden performance and transparency.
Agentic AI vs Supply-Path Optimization in Media Buying
Andrea Kwiatek, director of strategic partnerships at independent agency Goodway Group, told AdExchanger that while the industry is excited about agentic AI, supply-path optimization (SPO) remains a practical priority. Goodway Group is testing agentic media-buying agents by feeding them campaign briefs to compare buyer and seller agent recommendations and to verify whether agents can be constrained to approved buying paths. Kwiatek stressed the need for transparency, rigorous partner validation, and third-party verification to ensure AI-driven buying does not become another opaque black box. The interview highlights agency responsibilities to vet partners and protect client outcomes while experimenting with new agentic infrastructure.
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