Criteo and dentsu France have announced the launch of what they describe as the first video campaign fully orchestrated through Criteo’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), marking a significant step toward “agentic advertising.”
The campaign, unveiled on May 4, uses artificial intelligence agents to manage the entire media workflow — from planning and activation to optimisation — without relying on traditional campaign interfaces.
The development is expected to impact performance-driven agencies and CPG and retail brands investing in AI-powered media orchestration. It also sets a precedent for agencies in regions such as the GCC looking to adopt agentic media buying workflows.
According to the companies, a leading brand tasked dentsu with building a short-format video campaign focused on maximising visibility while delivering measurable outcomes. The campaign was executed via Criteo and optimised for completed views to ensure stronger engagement and performance.
Instead of using conventional dashboards, dentsu teams interacted with an AI trading agent through the dentsu.Connect platform. By inputting campaign objectives, budgets, timelines, formats, and targeting parameters in natural language, the agent translated the brief into executable actions across Criteo’s ecosystem using MCP integration.
This allowed the campaign to be fully set up and managed within a conversational interface, supported by secure API calls, eliminating the need to directly access the platform.
With this deployment, dentsu becomes among the first global communication groups to run a live, budget-backed video campaign driven entirely by an AI agent in a production environment.
Criteo said its MCP infrastructure enables direct integration with large language model assistants, allowing advertisers and agencies to create, monitor, and optimise campaigns in real time. The system leverages commerce intelligence signals such as purchase behaviour, category demand, and SKU-level performance to refine campaign decisions.
The companies said the approach significantly reduces execution time and allows teams to focus more on strategy, performance analysis, and long-term brand outcomes.
“For our teams, being able to launch and manage a Criteo campaign simply by conversing with an AI agent is a game changer. We move faster, standardize our workflows across platforms, and we can devote more time to strategy in service of our clients. This first end-to-end MCP campaign with Criteo is part of our ambition to be at the forefront of agentic media buying within dentsu,” adds Clémence Bougerol from dentsu.
“With this campaign orchestrated with dentsu via MCP, we’re moving from AI as an optimizer to AI as an orchestrator of the full media workflow. By investing early in MCP, we are reinforcing our ambition to make Criteo the commerce intelligence and infrastructure layer that connects AI agents to our clients’ business outcomes,” explains Grégoire Bruni, Director, Global Agency at Criteo.
The companies added that such capabilities could pave the way for cross-channel orchestration powered by commerce intelligence, signalling a broader shift toward outcome-driven media activation models.
