Advertise on podcast: Unharnessed

Everyone can build an agent. What makes one worth using? PMG’s Mike Treon joins Jonathan Moffie and Joseph Hirsch to unpack how an agency turns its data, workflows, and best media operators’ expertise into an agentic advantage. They explore why automated transactions are only the starting point, what adtech platforms need to offer beyond API wrappers, and how agents can improve planning, troubleshoot deals, and flag campaign changes before a human notices.

Six months ago, Eric Franchi's inbox started filling with a new kind of startup: companies building an agentic layer on top of every API and MCP server an advertiser can reach. Walled gardens, search, open web, ChatGPT, even DSPs. A couple turned into a dozen, then more than 25. Eric and his partner Corey gave the category a name: the Unified Media Platform, or UMP. Moffie and Joe dig into whether UMPs create net-new spend or just redistribute existing budgets, and why platform risk is the bear case. Eric also explains why the smartest exits may come from acquirers nobody sees coming, as Pinterest's acquisition of TV Scientific showed. Plus: the AI tools a VC actually uses every day, why ChatGPT ads favor the big players for now, and Eric's three-layer map of the most investable agentic categories for 2027. Disclosure: Eric's fund is an investor in Swivel, where Joe is founder and CEO.

You ship the product. Launch day comes. Your dashboard is 0 across the board. Every founder has felt that. Mike Khristo has felt it enough times to build a company about it. Layers is an agent that reads your repo, makes the content, buys the ads, and traces every install back to what caused it. On episode 3 of Unharnessed, we go deep with Mike on: • Using agents for customer acquisition, including buying inside ChatGPT • The alpha you get as a founder 💩 posting on X • The rise of AI assistants like Muse and Instinct, and what makes this crop actually useful • Joe gets free marketing advice for his vintage Native American jewelry side hustle Unharnessed is hosted by Jonathan Moffie and Joe Hirsch.

Nobody wants a team of 30 sub-agents. They want their problem solved. Adam Epstein, co-founder of Gigi (a buyer agent for the Amazon DSP) joins Moffie and Joe Hirsch to make the case that your agent architecture is your business, not your product, and shipping it to the customer is the same mistake as shipping your org chart.

TIME started serving ads to AI agents. Perplexity blocked them and called it deceptive. OpenAds.ai co-founder and CEO Steven Liss joins Moffie (Magnite) and Joe Hirsch (Swivel) to ask whether a market for ads-for-agents survives the model providers — who controls agent traffic, where the leverage actually sits, and what this looks like 18 months out.