AI Digital, a Miami-based consultancy founded in 2018, this week relaunched Elevate - its AI-powered marketing intelligence platform - with a redesigned architecture built to unify research, planning, optimization, and reporting across the full digital advertising landscape. The announcement positions the platform as a direct challenge to closed-ecosystem approaches that have drawn sustained criticism from agencies and advertisers for years.

According to the company, Elevate is built on what AI Digital calls its Open Garden Framework - a vendor-agnostic operating model that integrates across Meta, Google, Amazon, YouTube, TikTok, and more than 15 DSPs simultaneously. The platform processes 150 billion monthly data points and draws on 10,000 audience attributes, covering 8,000 analyzed ad campaigns and 12 integrated DSPs. Early adopters, according to the announcement, have reported up to 70% reductions in reporting time.

The problem the platform is built around

Programmatic media fragmentation is not a new grievance. PPC Land has documented the issue from multiple angles: the collapse of AppNexus's transparent fee structure when Microsoft shuttered its Xandr DSP, the persistent frustration of advertising executives who describe programmatic buying as "very broken", and the growing body of research showing that only 36% of post-transaction programmatic budgets reach valid, viewable, and non-fraudulent impressions.

Against that backdrop, AI Digital's framing is specific. According to the company, programmatic media typically represents just 15 to 20% of a client's overall budget - yet it accounts for up to 80% of the operational burden placed on agency teams. The implication is that agencies spend a disproportionate share of their time managing the reporting, reconciliation, and analysis that fragmented programmatic buying requires, leaving less capacity for strategic work.

"Programmatic shouldn't be a black box," said Stephen Magli, CEO of AI Digital. "With Elevate, we're giving agencies clear, AI-powered intelligence that cuts complexity, saves time, and keeps every decision focused on the client's KPIs - not platform incentives."

Four modules and what each does

Elevate is structured around four core functional modules. The first handles research and intelligence, covering competitor insights, audience understanding, and media intelligence. The second handles media planning - AI-assisted conversion of campaign briefs into strategies, including benchmark forecasts, competitive analysis, and cookieless targeting with 95%+ confidence across key metrics, according to AI Digital's documentation. That confidence figure is notable. Most platforms avoid quantifying cookieless targeting accuracy; attaching a specific number to it makes the claim testable, and agencies evaluating the platform will likely want to stress that figure against their own campaign data.

The third module centralizes optimization and reporting. According to the company, it standardizes performance data across all channels into a single hub, making cross-channel comparison possible without manual data wrangling. The fourth module covers advanced analytics - a unified dashboard that delivers Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM), path-to-conversion analysis, and an AI Campaign Analytics Assistant for strategic interpretation.

The inclusion of MMM as a core feature sits against a backdrop of active industry debate. Research published in February 2026 found that between 67% and 76% of buy-side decision-makers use attribution analysis or marketing mix models, yet these systems consistently underperform across core measurement promises. The IAB's April 7, 2026 white paper complicated the picture further, arguing that MMM is structurally ill-suited for retail media channels and can cause brands to systematically undervalue investment in that channel. Elevate's integration of MMM into a cross-channel platform does not resolve those structural debates, but placing MMM alongside path-to-conversion data within a single environment at least makes it easier for practitioners to cross-reference the outputs.

The Open Garden Framework in technical terms

AI Digital describes the Open Garden Framework as an operational model built around four pillars. The first is vendor-neutral architecture - no allegiance to a single DSP or SSP, deploying a curated supply strategy with Deal ID-based buying and DSP flexibility across platforms including DV360 and The Trade Desk. The second pillar is what the company calls "Smart Supply Strategy" - a curated private marketplace engine with transparent CPM tiers and supply-path optimization, covering local CTV bundles, live sports packages, FAST channel integrations, and DMA-specific inventory, all managed through what AI Digital calls a single supply intelligence layer.

The third pillar is AI-powered intelligence, handled by a proprietary system called OmniMix AI. According to AI Digital's framework documentation, OmniMix AI drives budget allocation simulation, saturation curves, overlap modeling, Monte Carlo simulations, and cross-channel attribution logic at scale. Monte Carlo simulation for budget allocation is not a standard feature in most programmatic planning tools; its inclusion suggests the platform is targeting agencies managing complex multi-channel briefs where uncertainty modeling matters. The fourth pillar is unified cross-channel measurement, incorporating ACR integrations from Comscore and SambaTV alongside foot traffic data from Cuebiq and Adsquare.

The framework's emphasis on DSP-agnosticism directly addresses a structural problem that has grown more acute following Microsoft's decision to shut down its Invest DSP - formerly Xandr, formerly AppNexus - in February 2026. That closure removed one of the few programmatic platforms that had historically maintained transparent fee structures, leaving agencies with fewer independent DSP options and pushing more of the market toward AI-driven systems operated by dominant platforms.

The video published on the company's YouTube channel on February 23, 2026 - six weeks before the relaunch announcement - framed the concept simply: "No single platform should own your strategy." The 64-second video gathered 218 views and was produced by Arevera studio. Its transcript describes the open garden as access "across every platform and signal" and positions Elevate as the system that powers the framework operationally.

Claimed performance metrics

AI Digital's announcement includes a set of specific efficiency claims for Elevate. According to the company, the platform delivers a 90%+ reduction in manual research and planning time, a 20-30% reduction in data and planning expenses, 70% faster reporting and analysis, 5-20% savings in targeting, a 5-20% retainer uplift, 4-7% better budget distribution, and three times improvement in conversion optimization.

These figures are drawn from early adopter reports and are not independently verified. The platform is available through a partnership model, with all Elevate features included within AI Digital's partnership fees - there is no additional per-feature cost, according to the announcement. Demos are available through aidigital.com/elevate or at [email protected].

The team structure behind the platform includes more than 200 expert auditors who work alongside the automated systems. AI Digital describes this as a "Human + AI" model intended to ensure precision beyond what automated systems alone deliver. The platform also supports white-label reporting, which allows agencies to present Elevate-generated analyses under their own branding - a feature that matters for agencies that bill media intelligence as a standalone service.

Why this matters for agencies managing fragmentation

The broader market context matters here. A Mediaocean survey published in January 2026 found that platform fragmentation was the largest concern for 56% of marketers, and only 10% of organizations described their advertising technology stacks as fully unified. 49% of marketers reported being affected by the complexity of cross-channel measurement and optimization - precisely the problem Elevate is designed to address.

Several platforms have moved in parallel directions. Basis launched Compass on April 2, 2026, an agentic AI tool that converts campaign briefs into fully structured omnichannel media plans, also citing up to 90% reduction in planning time. Infillion partnered with Yobi in January 2026 to bring Performance Max-style optimization to the open web while maintaining audience segment ownership and bid-level visibility. RTB House opened its programmatic infrastructure to smaller brands in March 2026, positioning the open internet as an alternative to walled garden retargeting for advertisers that previously had no viable option outside Meta or Google.

Where AI Digital's approach differs from these is scope. Basis is a DSP-centric platform. Infillion targets open web retargeting. RTB House is focused on SME advertisers. Elevate, by contrast, positions itself as an intelligence and planning layer operating above the DSP level - integrating across 12+ DSPs simultaneously, covering the full planning and measurement lifecycle, and providing MMM, competitive intelligence, and audience analysis within a single environment. That positioning makes it closer to a media-buying operating system than a point solution.

The transparency concerns the platform addresses are structural, not incidental. Digital audience measurement research published in March 2025 documented how platforms like Google, Meta, and Amazon have historically used opacity in measurement systems to maintain market dominance - refusing to participate in independent measurement while building closed ecosystems that control data collection, ad scheduling, and audience reporting. Elevate does not break open those closed ecosystems directly, but it layers intelligence across them in a way that gives agencies visibility the individual platforms do not provide on their own.

The ad tech industry has also been wrestling with whether new AI-native protocols could address fragmentation without adding more layers. The debate over the Ad Context Protocol in late 2025 surfaced the risk that new standards, without participation from Google, The Trade Desk, and Amazon DSP, might create "a new agentic AI standards walled garden versus a Google walled garden, a Trade Desk walled garden, Amazon DSP walled garden," in the words of ExchangeWire's Lindsay Rowntree. AI Digital's approach sidesteps that problem by connecting to existing DSP infrastructure rather than proposing a new protocol layer.

Company background

AI Digital operates a global team of 450 specialists across research, planning, and activation functions. The company describes its model as a combination of human expertise and AI systems, and positions itself as a partner to agencies rather than a competing media buyer. The partnership model - where Elevate features carry no additional cost beyond the AI Digital engagement fee - reflects that positioning: the platform is designed to increase the value of an existing agency-client relationship rather than replace it.

The Open Garden Framework, as a concept, was already present in the company's public materials well before the Elevate relaunch. The YouTube explainer published in February 2026 and the framework documentation on AI Digital's website both predate the April 7 announcement, suggesting the relaunch is the commercial activation of infrastructure that had been in development for some time. Whether Elevate's early adopter claims translate at scale - across agencies managing diverse client portfolios and brief types - is the question practitioners will be evaluating over the coming months.

Timeline

Related PPC Land coverage

Summary

Who: AI Digital, a Miami-based AI-native media consultancy founded in 2018 with 450 specialists globally, led by CEO Stephen Magli.

What: The relaunch of Elevate - a marketing intelligence platform built on the Open Garden Framework, integrating research, media planning, optimization, reporting, and analytics across 12+ DSPs, Meta, Google, Amazon, YouTube, TikTok, and 15+ data partners, processing 150 billion monthly data points and covering 8,000 analyzed ad campaigns.

When: The relaunch was announced on April 7, 2026, via Business Wire at 9:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time.

Where: AI Digital is headquartered in Miami. Elevate is available globally to agencies and brands via a partnership model, with demo access through aidigital.com/elevate.

Why: AI Digital argues that programmatic media - typically 15-20% of a client's budget - accounts for up to 80% of agencies' operational burden due to fragmented tools, closed ecosystems, and AI systems that optimize for platform revenue rather than client KPIs. Elevate is positioned as a glass-box alternative that consolidates planning, activation, and measurement into a single vendor-neutral intelligence layer with no additional per-feature cost.

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