What if AI-native ad agencies undercut the trade-desk middle layer?
Automated, model-driven media buying disintermediates independent demand-side platforms and agencies, compressing ad-tech intermediary margins even as platform spend holds.
Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.
The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 1–3 years horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a mixed shock. Automated, model-driven media buying disintermediates independent demand-side platforms and agencies, compressing ad-tech intermediary margins even as platform spend holds. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — AI breakthrough ▲ · Consumer spending ▲ · Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.