Swivel Pitches Agentic Trading as Fix for Century of Manual Media Buying
The Development
Jonas Olsen, VP International Sales at Swivel, argued in a VideoWeek interview published this week that media buying and selling has been inefficient for a century because of repetitive manual workflows and time-consuming tasks. Swivel positions agentic trading as the remedy: AI agents that automate those processes at scale, leaving humans to focus on relationship building and revenue-driving opportunities. Filmed at TV Rise 2026 in Seville, the discussion covers the rise of agentic buying and selling, its impact on the European market, and what must happen for the technology to evolve. The interview supplies no deployment figures, client names or performance data, so the claims about efficiency at scale remain a vendor position rather than demonstrated results.
Our Take
The pitch that agents free humans for relationship building is the comfortable version. The commercial reality is that routine trading labour becomes a commodity, and margin migrates to whoever controls the agent layer and the data feeding it. Swivel is a sell-side-oriented vendor arguing for scale, which tells you where automation lands first: premium video and CTV inventory in Europe, where fragmented, manual workflows are worst. The unresolved issue is interoperability. Buy-side and sell-side agents that cannot transact with each other simply recreate today's friction in software. Treat Olsen's note on what must happen for the technology to evolve as the real story: standards, trust and verification decide who wins.
What Changed
Agents can now execute both sides of the trading workflow, including buy-side planning and sell-side inventory handling, without human intervention in each step. The capability is no longer faster tooling for traders but delegated execution of routine transactions, with people reserved for negotiation and relationship work.
Marketing Impact
Media and investment teams face the largest change. Insertion orders, deal setup, reconciliation and routine optimisation are the first tasks to shift to agents. Planners become exception handlers and negotiators. Agencies selling hours against those workflows will see the billable base shrink first.
Competitive Implication
Sellers and platforms with clean, structured inventory and deal data gain structural advantage, because agents transact fastest where data is machine-readable. Agencies and trading desks monetising manual process, and European publishers with fragmented, unstructured deal flow, become vulnerable as automated counterparties route around them.
Strategic Outlook
Expect European broadcasters and CTV sellers to announce agent-enabled trading pilots through 2027 as vendors compete on interoperability. Buyers will demand audit trails and spend controls before granting autonomy. By late 2027, agentic capability becomes a procurement criterion in agency and platform reviews rather than a differentiator.
The Exploit
Action Item
Heads of media at European brands should run an audit before Q1 2027 planning closes, mapping every manual trading task by hours consumed, then demand a pilot from agency and platform partners targeting the three highest-volume workflows.