Burt Intelligence CEO Shay Brog joined James Deaker on The Yield Doctor to discuss how publishers are using automation today, where human judgment remains essential, and how AI agents could change the economics of advertising technology.
The conversation covers Burt’s role in connecting fragmented revenue data, the operational work publishers can automate, and the decisions that still require someone to define the objective and take responsibility for the outcome.
Automating the work around revenue
Revenue reconciliation, campaign reporting, and inventory forecasting are three areas where publishers already see practical benefits from automation.
Shay describes how Burt helps teams reduce the work involved in reconciling delivery for month-end billing, produce consistent campaign wrap reports across more clients, and forecast inventory for complex requirements. These capabilities share a foundation: connecting systems and making their data consistent enough to support everyday revenue operations.
That foundation also needs ongoing maintenance. The discussion explores how Burt combines its publisher analytics platform with integration monitoring, data backfills, and support for the way each customer defines and runs its business.
Humans still define what to optimize
“Let’s automate the easy stuff and leave the hard stuff for humans.”
Yield optimization illustrates the distinction. Maximizing near-term revenue, protecting long-term customer value, and improving profitability can lead to different decisions. Software can help teams evaluate those choices, but someone still needs to set the priorities, establish policies, and handle exceptions.
The opportunity is to free experienced people from repetitive work so they can spend more time on those decisions.
Agents change how software gets used
The conversation also covers Burt MCP and the move from AI-assisted work toward more AI-native automated workflows.
When people run queries manually, their time naturally limits usage. Agents can change that pattern substantially, raising questions about infrastructure costs and how software should be priced, and more importantly about the value in unlocking a reduced cost of curiosity.
Watch the full conversation above, or read James’s coverage on Korukea Media and in The Yield Doctor Report.