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#5 – What is the Agentic Internet? Virtual economies' impact on advertising [James Bentley]
🤖 WHAT WOULD YOU WANT AN AI AGENT TO BUY FOR YOU?
In this episode of The AI Lyceum Podcast, Samraj Matharu speaks with James Bentley — Director of AI Strategy at Awin (ex-Adobe ML) — to unpack how autonomous agents, real-time search, and ledger-based attribution could reshape the commercial internet.
James shares lessons from two decades in digital advertising, from early ML forecasting at Adobe to today’s LLM-powered discovery. Together, we dive into agent marketplaces, SEO for LLMs, tokenised value exchange, ethics (EU AI Act), security (agent traps), and the sustainability costs of “thinking” models.
FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
0:00 ➤ Introducing James
3:14 ➤ Paris AI engineer conference: why 2025 feels different
13:53 ➤ James’s background (Adobe → Awin) & role leading AI strategy
17:15 ➤ Virtual Agent Economies (DeepMind): what they are, why they matter
18:16 ➤ The new discovery stack: chat assistants vs classic search
20:32 ➤ How LLM usage is changing the ad-funded web
23:01 ➤ Real-time search as GenAI’s backbone (and why recency wins)
29:07 ➤ SEO for LLMs/AI overviews: signals, retrieval, and ranking layers
31:52 ➤ Ads inside chat: message-level bidding, brand representation
33:03 ➤ Agent Mode & chain-of-thought: reverse-engineering referral paths
33:55 ➤ Brand lift inside assistants: pre/post without traditional ads?
39:40 ➤ Ethics & competition: transparency, accountability, EU AI Act
52:50 ➤ Token economies & blockchains: verifiable attribution and reputation
58:00 ➤ Agent traps & cryptographic signing: securing agent workflows
1:02:02 ➤ Sustainability: data centres, energy limits, and cost controls
1:02:09 ➤ Audience Q: What would you want an AI agent to buy for you?
QUESTIONS ANSWERED ➤ How will agents transact value online — and who gets paid? ➤ What can brands do now to appear in AI answers (LLM-SEO)? ➤ Will assistants add new ad formats (and how would they measure lift)? ➤ How do tokens/ledgers fix today’s broken attribution? ➤ What are “agent traps” and how do we defend against them? ➤ Can AI grow while staying sustainable — and what should marketers track?
SUBSCRIBE to The AI Lyceum for more deep dives into AI, ethics, and the future of work.
CONNECT: 🌐 Website: https://theailyceum.com 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/TheAILyceum 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/108295902
👉 20% OFF University of Oxford Executive Programmes at https://theailyceum.com
#AI #AgenticInternet #VirtualAgents #VirtualAgentEconomies #AIAdvertising #Attribution #TokenEconomy #Blockchain #DigitalIdentity #EUAIAct #AIEthics #LLMSEO #Search #GenerativeAI #Sustainability
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By Samraj Matharu🤖 WHAT WOULD YOU WANT AN AI AGENT TO BUY FOR YOU?
In this episode of The AI Lyceum Podcast, Samraj Matharu speaks with James Bentley — Director of AI Strategy at Awin (ex-Adobe ML) — to unpack how autonomous agents, real-time search, and ledger-based attribution could reshape the commercial internet.
James shares lessons from two decades in digital advertising, from early ML forecasting at Adobe to today’s LLM-powered discovery. Together, we dive into agent marketplaces, SEO for LLMs, tokenised value exchange, ethics (EU AI Act), security (agent traps), and the sustainability costs of “thinking” models.
FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
0:00 ➤ Introducing James
3:14 ➤ Paris AI engineer conference: why 2025 feels different
13:53 ➤ James’s background (Adobe → Awin) & role leading AI strategy
17:15 ➤ Virtual Agent Economies (DeepMind): what they are, why they matter
18:16 ➤ The new discovery stack: chat assistants vs classic search
20:32 ➤ How LLM usage is changing the ad-funded web
23:01 ➤ Real-time search as GenAI’s backbone (and why recency wins)
29:07 ➤ SEO for LLMs/AI overviews: signals, retrieval, and ranking layers
31:52 ➤ Ads inside chat: message-level bidding, brand representation
33:03 ➤ Agent Mode & chain-of-thought: reverse-engineering referral paths
33:55 ➤ Brand lift inside assistants: pre/post without traditional ads?
39:40 ➤ Ethics & competition: transparency, accountability, EU AI Act
52:50 ➤ Token economies & blockchains: verifiable attribution and reputation
58:00 ➤ Agent traps & cryptographic signing: securing agent workflows
1:02:02 ➤ Sustainability: data centres, energy limits, and cost controls
1:02:09 ➤ Audience Q: What would you want an AI agent to buy for you?
QUESTIONS ANSWERED ➤ How will agents transact value online — and who gets paid? ➤ What can brands do now to appear in AI answers (LLM-SEO)? ➤ Will assistants add new ad formats (and how would they measure lift)? ➤ How do tokens/ledgers fix today’s broken attribution? ➤ What are “agent traps” and how do we defend against them? ➤ Can AI grow while staying sustainable — and what should marketers track?
SUBSCRIBE to The AI Lyceum for more deep dives into AI, ethics, and the future of work.
CONNECT: 🌐 Website: https://theailyceum.com 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/TheAILyceum 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/108295902
👉 20% OFF University of Oxford Executive Programmes at https://theailyceum.com
#AI #AgenticInternet #VirtualAgents #VirtualAgentEconomies #AIAdvertising #Attribution #TokenEconomy #Blockchain #DigitalIdentity #EUAIAct #AIEthics #LLMSEO #Search #GenerativeAI #Sustainability