Smartclip, RTL Group’s adtech business, has announced the launch of Sidekicks, a new agentic AI platform designed to address practical challenges in the media industry. Developed in collaboration with its subsidiary Realytics, the platform combines Realytics’ media intelligence with smartclip’s process and workflow automation — delivering intelligent, secure agentic AI solutions for cross-media operations.The platform supports operational teams with a portfolio of focused AI agents — ‘sidekicks’ — that assist across the digital advertising value chain, all while ensuring that proprietary business knowledge stays securely within the organisation.“While using GenAI for general purposes normally is very intuitive, it is surprisingly complex to get it to work reliably in complex business environments. Our goal is to achieve meaningful outcomes for operational teams in and outside the media industry,” said Thomas Servatius, Co-CEO at smartclip. “The Sidekicks approach is also engineered to protect what makes an organisation competitive and to keep critical knowledge inhouse.”While initially focused on digital advertising workflows, the initiative is also being advanced in collaboration with the Bertelsmann AI Hub.“Generative AI and agentic workflows hold enormous potential for Bertelsmann and the industries we serve,” commented Rhys Nölke, Chief Data Officer at Bertelsmann. “With our AI Hub we are backing AI developments with group-wide adoption potential across key domains within Bertelsmann. Sidekicks stands out as a concrete, hands-on approach, with strong potential for cross-domain application. It’s not just relevant for the media and ad-tech industry, but for any business looking to embed smart automation into daily operations in a secure and sustainable way.”Sidekicks will be made available to smartclip and Realytics clients, with broader access for the media industry planned. It is also currently being evaluated for pilot integration within RTL Deutschland and Ad Alliance — two key entities within RTL Group — to explore AI-driven automation in campaign management and cross-media planning.“Our vision for Sidekicks is grounded in the day-to-day realities of media professionals,” said Guillaume Belmas, CEO of Realytics. “By embedding intelligence where it’s needed most — in the actual flow of work — we can help teams move faster, smarter, and with greater confidence in a world where complexity and fragmentation are only increasing.”
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