What is the Pontiac Assistant?

With great power comes great responsibility. – Stan Lee

The Pontiac Assistant brings Pontiac MCP capabilities directly into the Pontiac platform, allowing users to interact with the DSP using natural language without leaving the interface.

Instead of navigating through multiple screens, manually building reports, or searching for individual campaign settings, users can ask the Assistant questions or give it instructions directly within Pontiac.

The Assistant brings Pontiac’s automation, campaign management tools, reporting, and documentation together in one conversational interface. It can perform work in bulk, create and edit campaigns and lines, analyze performance, troubleshoot delivery, and guide you through campaign setup from scratch.

Use the Assistant deliberately. Be specific about what you want it to do and review the information it returns before relying on it.

Beta: The Pontiac Assistant is currently a beta feature. It can make real changes to your Pontiac account and live campaign configurations. Review proposed changes before confirming them and verify completed changes in the platform afterward.

Anything created through the Assistant is inactive by default and will not begin serving automatically. Editing an existing campaign or line also does not change its active status unless activation is explicitly requested.

Using the Pontiac Assistant

The Pontiac Assistant can be accessed directly from the main Pontiac navigation bar. Select the blue chat icon in the upper-right corner of the platform, next to the notifications bell, to open the Pontiac Assistant.

Once opened, enter a question or instruction in the chat. Prompts can be written naturally—you do not need to know API endpoints, database fields, or MCP tool names.

Managing Your Assistant Window and Chat History

• Minimize the Assistant:
  • You can minimize the Pontiac Assistant at any time while continuing to work elsewhere in the platform.
  • Select the minimize icon at the top of the Assistant window to collapse the chat.
  • To reopen it, select the plus icon between New chat and the X.
  • Minimizing the Assistant allows you to move between the conversation and other areas of Pontiac without ending the chat.

• Close the Assistant:
  • Select the X at the top of the Assistant window to close it.
  • Closing the Assistant removes the chat window from your current view, but you can reopen the Assistant at any time by selecting the blue chat icon in the main navigation bar.
• Review Previous Chats:
  • Previously saved conversations can be reopened from the Assistant’s chat history. This allows you to review earlier questions, responses, recommendations, and completed workflows without starting over.
  • Select the arrow button next to the Pontiac Assistant name to view your previous chats.
  • Click each rows x to clear the chat from the history.
  • Chat history is isolated by both user and seat:
    • User: Your conversations are private to your Pontiac user. Other users within the same seat do not see your Assistant chat history.
    • Seat: Chat history is also specific to the seat in which the conversation occurred. If you have access to multiple seats, conversations from one seat will not appear while working within another seat.

• Continuing a Previous Conversation
  • Select a previous chat to reopen it and review the conversation history. You can then continue asking follow-up questions within that same conversation.
  • Keep in mind that campaign settings and performance data may have changed since the conversation originally took place. When returning to an older chat, ask the Assistant to recheck the current setup or performance before relying on previously returned information.

Start a Conversation

Not sure where to begin? Ask the Assistant what it can do.

Example Prompt: What capabilities do you have?

Example Output:

I’m your Pontiac RTB assistant — I help manage programmatic advertising campaigns on the Pontiac DSP. Here’s what I can do:

Setting things up

• Create and manage advertisers (brands/clients)
• Create campaigns (budgets, flight dates, targeting)
• Create lines (bid prices, geo/device/inventory targeting)
• Create and associate creatives (video, display, audio, CTV, HTML5)
• Set up conversion tracking pixels and audiences (custom, third-party, or ART/lookalike)

Targeting options

• Geography (countries, states/regions, DMAs, zip codes)
• Device types, browsers, operating systems
• Exchanges, deal lists, site/app lists
• Dayparting, frequency capping
• Private marketplace deals (browse, import, and build deal lists)

Budget and pacing

• Even or ASAP pacing
• Daily budget caps
• Flighted budgets (splitting a campaign’s budget across dated periods, with optional rollover)

Monitoring and optimization

• Performance metrics by campaign, line, creative, geography, device, exchange, deal, or day
• Real-time bid data and pacing reports
• Custom reports (flexible dimensions/metrics, exportable)
• Bulk updates across multiple campaigns or lines
• Cloning a proven campaign as a starting point for a new one

Other useful things

• Searching across all your entities by name or ID
• Reference data lookups (DMAs, regions, exchanges, IAB categories, etc.)
• Templates for quick campaign/line setup
• A guided step-by-step campaign builder for more complex setups
• Wiki search for how-to and conceptual questions about the platform
• Support ticketing if you need to reach the Pontiac team

A couple of important rules I follow: anything I create is inactive by default (you activate deliberately once it’s reviewed), and any change that writes data gets shown to you as a plain-language summary for confirmation before I actually execute it.

What would you like to work on?

Example Prompt 2: Increase the bid price by $1.00 on all active lines under Campaign 14142.

Currently, the line has the following bid prices for the following 13 lines.

Example Response:

All 13 lines under campaign 14142 are currently active.

Here’s the current state and the new $1.00 increase:

Group A — currently $24.00 → new $25.00 (4 lines)

• 72751 CTV – Premium Endemic – Channels
• 72752 CTV – Premium Endemic – Series
• 72753 CTV – Premium Endemic – Networks
• 72754 CTV – Premium Endemic – Apps

Group B — currently $25.00 → new $26.00 (7 lines)

• 72755 CTV – Value Endemic – Channels
• 72756 CTV – Value Endemic – Networks
• 72757 CTV – Value Endemic – Apps
• 72758 CTV – Premium Reach – Channels
• 72759 CTV – Premium Reach – Series
• 72760 CTV – Premium Reach – Networks
• 72761 CTV – Premium Reach – Apps

Group C — currently $14.00 → new $15.00 (2 lines)

• 72762 CTV – RON Reach
• 72763 CTV – Open Exchange

Reminder: this bulk update will set all 13 lines to inactive as an enforced side effect of the MCP write — they will stop serving and you’ll need to reactivate them afterward in the Pontiac UI.

Shall I proceed with these three bulk updates?

User Response: Yes

Example Response:

All 13 bid price updates completed successfully:

• Lines 72751–72754: now $25.00 CPM
• Lines 72755–72761: now $26.00 CPM
• Lines 72762–72763: now $15.00 CPM

Result:

Refreshing the page, you can see that the bid prices did increase by $1.00.

Start Exploring

Now that you’ve seen how the Pontiac Assistant works, start experimenting with your own prompts.

Ask questions, explore campaign performance, review setup, troubleshoot delivery, or try supported bulk updates. The more specific you are about what you want to accomplish, the more useful the Assistant can be.

A few ideas to try:

• “Show me all active campaigns.”
• “Which campaigns are under pacing?”
• “Summarize the setup for Campaign 14142.”
• “Why is this line not spending?”
• “What creatives are approved for this advertiser?”
• “Show me performance by exchange for the last 7 days.”
• “How does Primetime pacing work?”
• “Walk me through creating a new campaign.”

You can also ask follow-up questions and build on the same conversation rather than starting over.

Start simple, review the results, and keep exploring. The Pontiac Assistant is designed to help you spend less time navigating the platform and more time getting things done.