In 2024, we published 12 Questions You Should Ask Your Demand Side Platform to help brands and agencies better evaluate the DSP landscape, and it became one of our most downloaded resources.
A lot has changed since then.
AI has moved from a feature on a roadmap to an active participant in campaign execution. Data ownership, supply transparency, and identity resolution have gone from due diligence checkboxes to make-or-break decisions. The evaluation framework that made sense just two years ago needs to reflect where the industry actually is now.
We updated the guide. 15 Questions You Should Ask Your DSP for the Agentic Era, built for where the landscape actually is.
What’s really shifting and why it changes the conversation
For most of the programmatic era, DSP evaluation followed a familiar checklist: reach, channel coverage, pricing, service model. Those questions still matter. But they don’t tell you what you really need to know in 2026.
The more important question now is architectural: how is this platform built, and is it built for the future state of media buying?
There’s a meaningful difference between a platform architected from the ground up for autonomous, agentic execution and one that has added AI capabilities on top of an older foundation. That difference doesn’t always show up in a demo. It shows up in flexibility, transparency, and performance, over time, and at scale.
The questions that reflect the new landscape
Sharper evaluation starts with understanding what you’re really asking when you ask certain questions. A few worth reframing:
- When you ask about AI architecture, you’re really asking: is this platform going to keep up, or hold you back? There’s a structural difference between AI that’s native to a platform — where automated systems can handle planning, bidding, and optimization end-to-end — and AI that’s been layered onto legacy infrastructure. The latter creates a ceiling. The former removes one.
- When you ask about data ownership, you’re really asking: are you building long-term value, or renting access to your own results? Your audience data, campaign history, and performance insights are assets. A platform that controls them controls your leverage. The right partner activates your data for you; it doesn’t lock it in, co-mingle it, or use it for its own gain.
- When you ask about open infrastructure, you’re really asking: will this work with the intelligence and tools you bring, or only theirs? Many agencies and brands are building or buying their own systems. A platform that requires you to use its proprietary tools exclusively creates dependency. Open infrastructure gives you interoperability and the freedom to evolve your strategy without replatforming.
- When you ask about pricing transparency, you’re really asking: are this platform’s incentives aligned with yours? Hidden fees — on data onboarding, log-level access, AI connectivity — add up quietly and erode campaign performance. A platform that’s transparent about pricing is usually transparent about everything else, too.
What the right conversation looks like
The best DSP evaluations aren’t adversarial. They’re clarifying.
A platform built for this era welcomes hard questions because it’s designed to answer them. How a partner responds to questions about AI architecture, data ownership, and open infrastructure tells you as much as the answers themselves. If the response is defensive or vague, that’s a sign.
The right partner is one whose business improves when yours does, not one that profits regardless of whether your campaigns perform.
The infrastructure decision underneath the buying decision
Choosing a DSP in 2026 is an infrastructure decision. The right frame isn’t which platform looks strongest in a demo. It’s the platform architected for where media buying is headed: open, composable, and ready for autonomous execution.
Infillion MediaMath is built from the ground up for this era with composable infrastructure, transparent control, and AI-native buying designed for how media works now.
The Infillion Agent Connector is the first solution built specifically to let any AI agent, whether commercial, custom-built, or internal to your agency, plan, buy, and optimize campaigns directly through an open MCP connection, without proprietary lock-in or workflow rebuilds.
Bring these 15 questions into your next DSP conversation. The right partner will welcome them.
