Michael Mathewson on IAS Agent as the 'Global Advertising Compass'

Integral Ad Science (IAS) is expanding beyond verification with the launch of IAS Agent, an AI-powered solution positioned as a “Global Advertising Compass” for navigating today’s complex media landscape. In a conversation with Michael Mathewson, Head of Product Marketing at Integral Ad Science, IAS outlines how the company is evolving from auditor to advisor—transforming media quality signals into real-time intelligence that helps marketers optimize performance, reduce waste, and drive outcomes across channels.

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IAS has historically been known for ad verification. What does IAS Agent represent for the company's strategy?

We are making every ad dollar work harder, faster, and smarter with the launch of IAS Agent, demonstrating our evolution and building on our trusted measurement capabilities to become the performance engine for omnichannel marketers of all types and sizes across verticals and locales. IAS Agent makes every marketer an expert; it draws on over 15+ years of proprietary IAS insights, providing an unparalleled, holistic understanding of brand activity across all publishers, platforms, and contexts, and it delivers instantly.

While IAS has long established the industry standard for protecting brands, this shift from "auditor to advisor" enables our customers to harness media quality signals into key performance indicators, increasing their working media and campaign precision to deliver outcomes more efficiently across formats and channels. IAS Agent is comprehensive, and we’ve purpose-built it to be easy (and fun!) to use.

How does IAS Agent differ from traditional brand safety and verification solutions?

Traditional industry solutions are retrospective, providing "reports" after a campaign has run. In contrast, IAS Agent is proactive — it delivers brand management recommendations tailored to your unique preferences, and provides continuous intelligence in near real-time across the entire campaign impression lifecycle. We’re talking about the kind of expansive data analysis that was once reserved for data scientists, now being available to customers in a matter of seconds.

In practice, our AI-enhanced tech is synthesizing billions of daily signals — including over 70 years of video content every single day into actionable recommendations. Built on top of our cloud-first architecture, our technology is designed to handle the ever-increasing pace and scale of digital media creation, and IAS is continuously scaling coverage to stay ahead of it. This enables marketers to optimize in realtime, preventing waste before it happens and reorienting campaigns towards the most high-quality and performant ad opportunities.

Is IAS moving into performance and media optimization with this product?

Precisely. We are implementing media quality as a critical indicator that can be used to optimize performance and help customers extract even more value from every CPM. For example, our data proves that impressions that lack viewability or are delivered in misaligned environments fail to drive business impact. Our focus is on providing interoperable solutions that not only protect and optimize simultaneously, but seamlessly automate campaigns to deliver towards the most performant inventory and through the most efficient supply path. Media quality is the engine for growth.

What allows IAS to build this kind of system when many companies are developing AI tools?

Our purpose-built solutions are enhanced with advanced AI, and we’ve invested in a fully modern, cloud-first architecture engineered for precision at enormous scale. This means delivering optimal performance with minimal latency, and we’ve invested to keep up with the needs – and accelerating pace of media creation – for tomorrow, and beyond.

Read More: Integral Ad Science launches AI assistant to streamline campaign setup, insights

One example of this scale in action is our proprietary Multimedia Understanding Model (MUM), which is the most scrutinizing media classification engine in the industry. It comprehensively analyzes image, audio, video, and text frame-by-frame, delivering better accuracy than standard industry methods. This results in better analysis of what's actually happening in the content with unmatched granularity.

How will IAS Agent change how advertisers and agencies work?

First, IAS Agent democratizes access to specialized expertise, effectively making every marketer an expert by providing instant, AI-enhanced insights. Second, it creates instant efficiency: our early testing shows that IAS Agent decreases brand profile configuration time by over 50%, reducing the necessary manual interactions from 40 down to just 6. By eliminating low-value operational overhead, teams can stop focusing on data aggregation and start focusing on high-impact strategic decisions, truly amplifying their unique expertise with the help of our agent.

Read More: IAS to be acquired by Novacap for $1.9 Billion to further support its strategic goals

Does IAS Agent compete with demand-side platforms (DSPs) or buying tools?

No, it is architecturally complementary. DSPs handle transactional logic within their own ecosystems, whereas IAS Agent acts as an interoperable infrastructure across the open internet, CTV, and social platforms. We provide the expert-level strategic guidance and cross-platform "media quality inspection" that enriches a marketer's existing technology stack, rather than replacing it.

What does moving beyond verification mean for IAS’s role in the industry?

It signals our shift to a strategic advisor, while maintaining the trusted transparency and objectivity that keeps our customers in total control. Throughout 2026, we are doubling down on this by continuously expanding the capabilities IAS Agent supports. This is just the beginning.

How should marketers think about the rise of AI agents in advertising?

Enterprise AI must be defined by trustworthiness, controllability, and interpretability. We reject "black box" systems that cannot explain their logic, as they introduce enterprise risk. IAS Agent is engineered to augment human expertise, allowing marketers to see the causal reasoning behind every recommendation and maintain granular control over execution with the ability to make adjustments, too.

Read More: IAS launches AI brand safety tool for Meta Threads

How does IAS Agent stay ahead of digital advertising trends and best practices?

Because IAS Agent is positioned across the supply chain, it instantaneously ingests live global signals as new formats and fraud methodologies—like AI-generated low-quality content—emerge. Our systems scale with the accelerating pace of media creation, allowing us to identify contextually optimal inventory while systematically eliminating non-performant impressions. This ensures marketers maintain a sustained competitive advantage in a rapidly evolving landscape.