Author: Zofia Zwieglinska

This story originally published on sister site, Glossy.

When Pandora rolled out its first AI-powered service agent earlier this year, the goal wasn’t to showcase cutting-edge technology. It was to survive the peak holiday shopping season without sacrificing the customer experience or margins.

The agent, dubbed Clara, launched as a chatbot on the brand’s website in mid-February and now resolves around 60% of customer service inquiries without escalation to a human agent. Pandora’s previous chatbot resolved around 40%. More unexpectedly, a Pandora spokesperson said Clara has contributed to a 10% increase in the company’s net promoter score, measuring how likely customers are to recommend a brand to others.

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As programmatic means of investing in channels spreads further across the media landscape, there remain a few gaps where it’s neither efficient nor even doable. One of those less developed areas is product placement and sponsorship opportunities, which are either unwieldy or downright un-buyable.

But Omar Tawakol, CEO of Rembrand, has his eye on a bigger prize — trying to improve advertising within the streaming world. Rembrand uses AI to work with both advertisers and publishers to improve the ad experience — since not everyone can comfortably afford to buy more costly ad-free access to content. Among other things, Rembrand uses uses a process called neural inverse rendering to digitally insert sponsored items into movies, shows and social media content made by millions of influencers across various platforms — rather than manually entering them. That automated process lends itself to investment through programmatic means.

A veteran of multiple ad-tech and audience data firms, from Oracle to BlueKai to Cisco to PlaceIQ, Tawakol also sits on the board of The Trade Desk, having also served on LiveRamp’s board until September of this year. Tawakol shared his thoughts about trends to expect in 2026 and how Rembrand fits into them.

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