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Traditional TV — let alone a live NFL playoff game — might be the last ad inventory type you’d think to test trying out AI agents against. And yet that’s exactly what NBCUniversal did last month.

The media conglomerate ran a test with ad agency RPA, marketing analytics firm Newton Research and Comcast-owned ad tech firm FreeWheel to have AI agents participate in buying an ad against a live NFL playoff game. But did it work?

“It works. It is a functioning technical proof-of-concept that accurately represents what the buyer wants to buy and what the seller has to sell,” said Ryan McConville, chief product officer and evp of ad products and solutions at NBCUniversal on the latest Digiday Podcast.

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Even as TikTok’s U.S. ownership shake-up fuels uncertainty and some audience drift, Vita Coco is staying put, keeping the platform central to its social marketing without mistaking it for a permanent foundation.

That stance, according to its CMO Jane Prior, isn’t denial. It’s restraint. When talk of a U.S. deal first surfaced, the brand adjusted its expectation and kept moving. Now, the uncertainty just reads like the cost of doing business in an internet era where platforms wobble as often as they win. 

Because leaving would mean abandoning years of momentum — the audience, the creative fluency and the cultural muscle memory — its marketers have been stacking there since 2021. Over that period, TikTok has grown to account for around 70% of its social spend, which is the bulk of its marketing outlay. Until the floor actually caves in, Vita Coca’s marketers are still running plays. 

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