TIME uses two AI agents, while its sellers keep the relationships

By Sophie Lindqvist

TIME has put two Kana AI agents into its ad-sales workflow, one drafting proposals from buyer RFPs and another monitoring live campaigns for delivery problems. TIME’s deployment offers a concrete case study of where agentic work can absorb coordination without taking over client relationships.

Mark Howard, TIME’s chief operating officer, framed the result as more time for sellers to sell, not fewer sellers. Before Kana, reps logged request details in Salesforce, triggering Slack alerts. Product experts joined Google Meet calls to map inventory across a large suite, while notes moved by email and responses took days to assemble.

Howard said: “Premium media sales is still a highly personal, relationship-driven business,” adding that sellers were losing too much time playing coordinator.

What does the sales agent change?

The first agent works beside TIME’s sales team, reading RFPs and drafting proposals from a shared context layer that combines CRM, order-management, ad-server and live-campaign information. Kana co-founder Vivek Vaidya calls that layer a “knowledge graph.” Kana builds it from TIME’s Salesforce CRM, order-management system and ad server, covering direct and programmatic inventory.

Live campaign data is atypical for a pre-sales tool, Vaidya said. It normally belongs to ad operations after a deal closes, where it informs retrospective performance analysis. Kana uses it earlier, researching historical campaigns and similar advertisers before turning the findings into raw material for pitches.

A salesperson can then develop proposals for advertisers TIME has not sold to yet, Vaidya said. The proposal-in-minutes premise remains unquantified, with no measured turnaround, proposal volume or revenue result.

Kana came out of stealth in February with a $15 million seed round. Founders Tom Chavez and Vivek Vaidya are serial ad-tech entrepreneurs who previously co-founded Krux, a data-management platform that Salesforce bought roughly a decade ago. In 2019, they launched super{set}, a nontraditional VC firm that co-founds, builds and incubates data and AI startups.

Its portfolio also includes privacy platform Ketch; data clean-room provider Habu, which LiveRamp bought for $200 million in 2024; and Rembrand, an AI-powered virtual-product-placement company that agreed last week to merge with content ad platform Whisper World. The portfolio spans privacy, clean rooms, virtual placement and sales automation.

How does the ops agent affect campaign budgets?

After a deal closes, TIME’s second agent watches campaigns already in flight, turning underdelivery signals into recommended changes in trafficking, pacing or budget before a shortfall becomes a make-good. Existing dashboards tell ad operations when a campaign is underdelivering or pacing poorly, but they do not explain what action to take, Vaidya said.

TIME’s revenue-operations team also uses the tool. Howard said he had seen “a significant increase in what they’re able to accomplish in any given day or week.” He described that capacity gain without a percentage, headcount change or cost saving. The system also supports budget planning for the current year, Q1 and 2027, Howard said.

For practitioners, the clearest capacity effect is staff time moving from coordination to pitching and account development. The prospecting feature could widen TIME’s advertiser prospect pool, but the company disclosed no count of new advertisers, win rates or audience reach. The budget implication is prescriptive recommendations, not proof of lower spend.

The agents can help teams redirect resources, explain underdelivery and model future periods using a publisher’s own systems. No campaign savings, revenue lift or named advertiser performance figures were provided. TIME disclosed no broader rollout date and no evidence that other publishers use the same setup.

Can agents negotiate directly with advertisers?

Kana could extend the administrative path into a direct exchange between a publisher’s agent and an advertiser’s agents through an MCP server, a standard way for AI agents to connect to other software. Vaidya said the capability could be ready as soon as tomorrow and called it an easy technology problem.

Between proposals and pacing, the agents now cover most of a deal’s administrative life cycle. In a hypothetical exchange, the salesperson heads out for a three-martini lunch while the agents continue.

That is Kana’s stated capability, not a TIME rollout plan. Howard confirmed that TIME does not intend to automate the client relationship or let agents conduct the deal. He also said the company does not apply this approach to its journalism, while allowing that today’s boundary might change. Agents handle preparation and monitoring, while the salesperson retains the relationship.

The next test is whether TIME can convert its reported capacity gains into measured proposal speed, campaign savings and advertiser expansion without changing that human boundary.