Author: Michael Bürgi

Lots of stories have been written about whether the term “agency” applies to agencies anymore — mostly under the divisive topic of principal media (where the agency acts as both buyer and seller). But there are a growing number of agencies that have delved so deeply into technology and design that when they sit down to pitch a prospective client, they end up shocking that marketer with the things they’re able to do that have little or nothing to do with marketing or media investment. 

I first wrote about Instrument back in the fall of 2024, as part of the Code and Theory network unit within Stagwell. Since then, AI has thrust itself to the forefront of pretty much every agency, but even more so perhaps at Instrument which sits amidst technology, creativity, design and culture. 

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Agency trading desks spent a decade trying to live down what they were. Horizon Media thinks it’s finally figured out what they should become. 

It’s building what it describes internally as an “orchestration and intelligence” layer that sits above ad tech rather than alongside it. The idea: plug every relevant media marketplace partner – demand-side platforms, supply-side platforms, ad verification vendors, data partners, measurement providers and creative tech – into a central command center of sorts. That command centre, dubbed “Horizon OS” – shorthand for Open Sphere – has already sent RFIs to more than 200 potential partners, which have been whittled down to a pilot cohort now in a green-lit integration phase. 

“The whole idea is we are canvassing the entirety of the media marketplace and basically saying, ‘hey, media marketplace partners, you are being invited in to integrate with Horizon’s central brain’, which will become the elevated orchestration and intelligence layer,” said Maikel O’Hanlon, svp and managing director, programmatic at Horizon. 

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