Paul Jelinek, chief business officer at EX.CO, joined me in Cannes for TRB Conversations, powered by EX.CO, to lay out why CTV programmatic advertising is still in its early days — and why that's about to change fast.

In this TRB partner episode, Jelinek explains why he thinks agentic advertising hasn't fundamentally transformed the industry yet, how EX.CO's "yield engine" technology — originally built for online publishers — is now being ported to CTV and digital out-of-home, and why he believes CTV programmatic today looks like online video did eight years ago.

Also covered:

• Why AI and agentic tools are currently more useful as tactical marketing and discovery tools than as full transaction engines
  

• The differences between managing yield in online video versus CTV, and what's transferable
  

• Why hiring more salespeople isn't a scalable growth strategy for CTV publishers
  

• EX.CO's evolution from an online publishing platform (formerly Playbuzz) to a cross-channel yield technology company.

• Chapters:

• 01:17 Agentic Ads Reality Check

• 04:59 Exco Origins

• 07:24 What Changes in CTV

• 11:28 CTV Programmatic Timeline

• 12:00 Cannes Memory Lane