PubMatic Revenue Climbs 17% as Agentic Campaigns Pass 120 Mark

PubMatic posted $79.6 million in Q3 revenue, up 17% year over year, driven by AI products and rising demand for CTV and mobile app advertising. CFO Steve Pantelick told investors on Monday's earnings call that CTV represented 21% of total quarterly revenue, growing 30% year over year, while mobile app revenue grew nearly 40% and made up roughly 27% of the quarter's take.

The bigger story sits in how ads get bought. Since PubMatic launched AgenticOS, its operating system for agentic advertising, in January, buyers have run more than 120 fully agentic campaigns through it — and roughly one-third of those landed in Q3 alone. That's acceleration, not a flat line.

How much of the campaign goes to the machines?

When an investor asked CEO Rajeev Goel which parts of a campaign still need humans, his answer leaned blunt: whatever AI doesn't handle today soon will. Some clients are "all in on AI," Goel said, while others want to manually review each campaign step — he framed the gap as different "parts of the maturity spectrum." Read that as a warning: holdouts get a few years, not a pass.

What are the risks of agentic buying?

"There's a lot of risk in automating choice," Jonathan Roberts, head of innovation at People Inc., told an IAB roundtable titled "Advertising in the Agentic Era" on Monday. He argued that AI assistants making purchase decisions could produce a "winner takes all" outcome for brands — a dynamic he called "bad for democracy."

Roberts also flagged the data problem from the other side. "People will literally tell [them] everything, even if they shouldn't," he said of personal agents, raising both privacy concerns and the risk of overreliance on memory. He likened AI answer engines to a bar that hands every customer an espresso martini because that's the average order. The workable middle ground, per Roberts: agents that use real-time data, protect privacy, and still personalize. Otherwise, "we have this kind of 'espresso martini for everyone' world, and that sucks."

Can celebrity AI likenesses win over consumers?

WPP-owned Ogilvy is partnering with Creative Artists Agency to use the likenesses of CAA's celebrity clients in AI-generated ads, Digiday reports. The ads will draw on CAA's existing library of digital face and body scans — built for de-aging and postproduction work — and will carry AI watermarks and talent approval.

The deal fits Hollywood's rulebook. SAG-AFTRA's AI regulations require performer consent for digital replicas and compensation at the same rates as in-person filming. Only Terry Crews has publicly opted in so far. Consumer trust may prove the harder sell, given the lingering association between deepfaked celebrity endorsements and online scam ads. The takeaway: consent solves the legal question, not the credibility one.

Also making the rounds

• The New York Times rounded up the best, worst and strangest midterm ads.
• Regional sports network SNY took hits from layoffs and show cancellations, per The Athletic.
• Business Insider published a timeline of the scandal that rocked Nvidia CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang over the weekend.
• SiriusXM hired Anjali Sud as its new CEO, Variety reported.

For PubMatic, the bet is that agentic buying follows the same curve as CTV — small share today, double-digit growth tomorrow.