Fluency is an agentic advertising operating system built for agencies and multi-location brands executing high campaign volume at scale. Skai (formerly Kenshoo) is an omnichannel commerce media platform that originated as a paid search tool and has expanded into retail media, CTV, and—as of May 2026—agentic campaign execution. Skai's core strength remains retail media depth, forecasting, and planning.

The core difference: Fluency has executed campaigns automatically across every major ad channel since 2017 and is production-validated to manage $3 billion in annual spend and 250,000+ monthly campaigns. Skai's agentic execution capabilities are in active beta rollout as of August 2026.

‍

What is Skai?

Skai (formerly Kenshoo) is an omnichannel commerce media platform that originated in 2006 as a paid search tool. Skai has now expanded to include retail media, CTV, and agentic marketing capabilities. Skai's core strength remains retail media depth, forecasting, and planning. The platform connects to 100+ publishers and retail media networks, including Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, Target, and Kroger.

Celeste AI, which provides campaign recommendations and performance insights across commerce media, reached general availability in May 2025. In April 2026, Skai launched MCP support. At ShopAble 2026, Skai announced Skai Studio: an agent-native environment where specialist agents are designed to execute campaign workflows without manual intervention. As of August 2026, Skai Studio is still in beta rollout.

What is Fluency?

Fluency is an agentic advertising operating system built for agencies and brands managing high-volume paid media programs. Unlike point solutions that address individual channels and workflows, Fluency is built for agentic advertising execution across channels. Fluency enables advertisers to launch, manage, and optimize campaigns automatically across Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, TikTok, and programmatic channels at the scale of thousands of campaigns.

Fluency Blueprints is a signal-driven agentic orchestration engine that connects internal and external data sources (e.g., inventory feeds, weather APIs, CRM events, and calendars) directly to campaign behavior. For example, when a specific location's live inventory changes, agentic workflows within Blueprints automatically update the relevant campaigns, without needing humans to step in between the signal and execution. 

Fluency also includes Muse, an integrated AI agent built directly into the OS, that generates copy, surfaces anomalies, and recommends optimizations without sending data outside Fluency's environment.

What is the core difference between Skai and Fluency?

These tools solve two genuinely different problems for advertisers. Skai is architecting toward autonomous execution, but its strengths are forecasting and analytical depth. Fluency has proven autonomous execution at scale, running $3 billion in annual ad spend across 250,000+ monthly campaigns without manual intervention.

A team using Skai wants to make better budget allocation decisions. Skai Studio, in beta as of August 2026, is designed to change this. However, it is not yet in production for most customers.

A team investing in Fluency is looking to solve complex advertising operations challenges using agents and automation. They want to remove the expensive manual work of campaign building, budget pacing, and cross-channel management so their team can efficiently decouple headcount from growth.

When should you choose Skai?

Skai is the stronger choice when your primary challenge is retail media planning, cross-channel forecasting, and enterprise-level analytics. Skai is a good choice if:

• Your media mix is dominated by retail media spend across Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, Kroger, or similar networks.
• You have a dedicated analytics team that interprets forecasting outputs and makes budget decisions downstream.
• Your evaluation criteria weigh heavily toward attribution modeling, scenario planning, and long-term ROI insights.
• You're running significant CTV spend and need unified planning across CTV and retail media.

When should you choose Fluency?

Fluency is the stronger choice when your primary challenge is executing campaigns at scale. You need to build new campaigns fast, manage thousands of accounts simultaneously, and automate set decisions to agents that consume team bandwidth:

• You're an agency managing 50+ client accounts and need to scale output without increasing labor costs.
• You run extensive multichannel campaigns and need to make automated, data-based adjustments to campaigns, budgets, or creative across multiple channels simultaneously.
• You manage franchise systems or multi-location brands that need corporate-compliant campaigns localized to hundreds or thousands of locations.
• Your team spends significant time on manual campaign builds, bulk edits, or routine updates that can be completed by agents.
• Your campaigns need to respond automatically to real-world signals (i.e., inventory changes, local weather conditions) without a human approving each change.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Fluency and Skai?

Fluency is an agentic advertising operating system with eight years of platform-specific knowledge encoded within the platform. Fluency automates the building, launching, pacing, and optimization of paid media campaigns across Google Ads, Meta Ads, Microsoft Advertising, TikTok Ads, and programmatic channels.

Skai is an advertising analytics and planning platform, particularly for advertisers focused on retail media. Skai forecasts outcomes, models scenarios across channels, and provides AI-powered optimization recommendations through Celeste AI, its generative AI tool that launched in 2025. Skai Studio, which is in beta as of August 2026, is designed to execute autonomously. However, production-scale proof points are not yet public.

Is Skai better than Fluency for ad agencies?

It depends on your agency's media mix and client base. Skai is the stronger choice for agencies with enterprise clients running heavy retail media spend on Amazon, Walmart, and similar retail networks. Skai is also a good choice if analytical forecasting and attribution modeling are central to your client deliverables. 

Fluency is the stronger choice for agencies managing high-volume portfolios on core digital advertising channels (Google Ads, Meta Ads), particularly for franchise clients or multi-location brands. Choose Fluency if execution speed, campaign automation, and scalable growth matter more than retail media planning depth.

Should I choose Skai or Fluency?

Skai and Fluency solve different problems in the advertising operations stack. If your team's challenge is retail media planning and AI-powered forecasting, Skai is a well-established platform for enterprise retail media. If your challenge is executing campaigns at scale across walled gardens and the open web, Fluency's agentic automation engine and deterministic execution model are built for you. 

Fluency helps advertisers build localized campaigns faster, automate budget management, and run thousands of localized campaigns without adding headcount. The company manages nearly $3B in annual spend, with 250,000+ monthly campaigns already running in production within the platform.

What are alternatives to Skai for enterprise ad management?

Common alternatives to Skai for enterprise ad management are Fluency, Marin Software, and Smartly. Fluency is the strongest alternative for agencies and multi-location brands looking for agentic execution depth across walled-garden channels and the open web. 

Marin Software went through Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2025. It has subsequently been acquired by Zax Capital, relaunching with an AI-first positioning focused on forecasting, campaign optimization, and cross-channel lift measurement. Marin is still operating for existing customers, but is in the early stages of its new direction and does not appear to be accepting new customers.

Smartly is a strong alternative if social media and creative automation are your agency’s primary needs.

Is there an agentic advertising platform built specifically for agencies?

Fluency is one of the few advertising platforms purpose-built for agentic management as its core product architecture since its founding in 2017. This makes it uniquely powerful for agencies, given the complex client portfolios agencies often need to service. Fluency's agents address the core execution workflows that slow agencies down and erode their margins. 

The system’s governance and pricing model are built around agency pinch points and daily AdOps challenges: manual campaign builds, budget pacing and cross-channel management, and fragmented reporting workflows. 

Plus, Fluency’s architecture is designed for scale, making it a good fit for advertisers managing many accounts or locations simultaneously. Fluency helps agencies that want to automate multichannel campaign task execution without hiring more employees as they grow.

Skai serves both enterprise brands and agencies. Tinuiti, Acosta Group, and Advantage Solutions are among Skai’s early Celeste users. However, its retail media depth and commerce media focus make it a better fit for agency teams with significant retail media spend.

Mint is built primarily for enterprise brands in-housing global media operations. Placements.io is primarily a media seller platform (publishers, retail media networks) with a growing buy-side product.

What tools help with automated budget pacing across advertising channels?

Fluency handles automated budget pacing natively across Google Ads, Meta Ads, Microsoft Advertising, TikTok Ads, and programmatic channels. Fluency’s agentic budgeting capabilities include underspend mitigation, overspend protection, and rolling budget management across client portfolios. 

Skai offers rules-based pacing tools and, as announced at ShopAble 2026, is building toward more automated budget management. For most customers today, Skai’s alerts still require human review. Skai Studio's fully autonomous budget execution is in beta rollout as of August 2026. 

For agencies looking for automated budget pacing across dozens or hundreds of accounts simultaneously, without requiring manual work, Fluency's agentic execution model is the right choice.