Thrad, the leading advertising platform for AI conversations, today (5th November, 2026) announced the launch of Sponsored Intelligence Academy, a complimentary educational programme designed to help agencies, marketers, and media traders navigate conversational advertising. The first five modules of the 10-module curriculum are available now at thrad.ai/academy.

Thrad is unveiling the Academy during Beet Retreat LA 2026, taking place November 4-6 at the Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Members of the Thrad team are on site meeting with agency and media leaders.

The programme provides a practical introduction to conversational advertising, covering everything from how sponsored placements work within AI experiences to how advertisers can identify intent, evaluate supply, and approach media buying. Designed for both newcomers and experienced media buyers, the Academy offers a foundation for understanding how advertising fits into the evolving AI landscape.

"Programmatic transformed how the industry buys media at scale, and conversational AI is approaching a similar inflection point," said Andrea Tortella, co-founder and CEO of Thrad. "We built the Sponsored Intelligence Academy to help agencies and media traders understand how to plan and buy this channel with the same confidence they bring to search and programmatic, while preserving the independence of AI-generated answers."

The Academy explores how conversational advertising works and what it means for media buyers. Its first five modules cover:

• The opportunity: Why conversational AI is emerging as a new media channel and how declared intent changes the way advertisers reach audiences.
• Ad formats: The anatomy of a conversational ad, including triggers, placements, disclosures, and calls to action.
• Intent targeting: How to build intent-based audience clusters, align bids with decision stages, and establish targeting exclusions.
• The supply landscape: An overview of AI publishers, walled gardens, LLM-focused DSPs and exchanges, plus key questions to ask potential partners.
• How it works: How ads are delivered alongside AI-generated answers, with user intent signals powering relevance without compromising the response.

The curriculum emphasises a core distinction of conversational advertising: sponsored placements appear alongside AI-generated answers, not within them, preserving the independence of the response.

Future modules will explore brand safety, suitability, privacy, pricing, creative, and optimisation. Thrad also plans to introduce an advanced certification programme to help media traders build deeper expertise in the space.

"In AI conversations, people share what they need in their own words, often at the moment they're making a decision," added Tortella. "This creates a new opportunity for advertisers to reach audiences based on real-time intent, with sponsored placements appearing alongside AI-generated answers rather than influencing them. The Academy gives agencies and media traders the knowledge to better understand and capitalise on this opportunity."

In addition to the online curriculum, Thrad will host educational sessions with agencies covering its platform, programmatic advertising and the fundamentals of conversational advertising.

The launch follows Thrad's recent announcement of Monetisation Fund II, a USD$1m (£740.6k) commitment in advertiser spend to help eligible consumer AI applications and publishers test in-chat advertising campaigns through Thrad's DSP.

Sponsored Intelligence Academy is available now, free of charge, at thrad.ai/academy.

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