Very soon, you won’t just deploy AI agents—you’ll buy them. Creative ideation agents, merchandising agents, media optimization agents and customer-care agents: Each is a purchasable “unit of work” that can act across your stack. That shift is bigger than a tooling decision. It’s a commercial and governance model that CMOs must shape now—identity clauses, auditability, rotation APIs, consent handling and performance service-level agreements (SLAs)—so speed doesn’t outpace safety. By 2028, enterprises are expected to spend over $680 billion annually for AI systems. That’s not just tooling—it’s procurement at scale.
And because you wouldn’t run media without brand safety, you won’t run agents without identity safety.
For a decade, marketing technology referred to platforms we configured. In the agent era, we’ll increasingly contract for work, not just software, such as “generate 500 variants within brand rules” or “optimize feed and bids hourly.” Providers will offer catalogs of agents specialized by channel and task, with their own prompts, policies and guardrails.
Think of this like your media supply chain: Some agents come from global vendors, some from boutiques and some are built in-house. The procurement question is no longer “Which tool?” but “Which agent workforce do we trust to do which work, under what controls, at what price and with what proof?” Agents won’t just be configured; they’ll be contracted, similar to talent or media buys.
An agent that can publish, discount or alter a data model isn’t a toy. It’s an actor with power. As such, CMOs must include these requirements in their RFPs:
Tie noncompliance to service credits and, for egregious breaches, termination rights. You’re not being difficult; you’re protecting the brand, customers and P&L.
Agent vendors love to price by tokens, seats or calls. None of that equals business value. Price and govern against outcomes:
Write service level objectives (SLOs) for each dimension and link them to fees. For example, a media agent that claims a 10% return-on-advertising-spend (ROAS) uplift should be measured with controlled experiments. If the lift is below the threshold, the fees step down. If the revoke velocity exceeds your SLO or provenance drops, service credits apply automatically. Pay for verified performance, not compute.
Many brands will want the benefits of shared innovation without exporting raw customer data. The answer is a federated approach: Keep data where it lives, and let approved agents request only what’s needed under strict contracts and policies. Think of it less as moving agents to the data and more as exposing controlled views of the data to agents, with goals, limits and audit trails attached.
For cross-brand or cross-market collaboration, share models, prompts and policies, not raw datasets. Ask providers to support federated testing so you can evaluate agent performance against your rules before adoption. This reduces risk, shortens onboarding and keeps regulators on your side. Legal will love it, as will your CPO.
AI introduces a new class of invisible costs: compute that burns power and water without moving an outcome. Treat it like wasted media spend—inefficient, unmeasured and brand-damaging if left unchecked. Ask vendors to disclose estimated energy use per job and to support efficiency features like prompt caching or batch inference.
Contracts are only the start; production is where governance lives or dies. CMOs don’t run the systems, yet they’ll face the board when brand risk surfaces. Three controls matter most:
CMOs already manage marketplaces (for media, talent and platforms). The agent marketplace is next. Treat agent supply the same way you treat media supply: curated, measured, continuously optimized and with identity safety as the nonnegotiable.
Set the standards now, in business terms the board understands, and you’ll scale AI with confidence, shipping faster, spending smarter and protecting the trust your brand is built on.