automation · autopilot · 2026-07-05
Optional Autopilot: automation that stays inside your limits
Autopilot is help you turn on — not a black box that runs the book. Goals, hard limits, and an audit log so operators stay in charge.
Many media buyers don't want software deciding everything. That's fine — Waveband is a full buying seat without Autopilot. Autopilot exists for the hours you don't want to spend on pacing checks and bid nudges: optional, bounded, and auditable.
The pitch for algorithmic optimization is decades old. The problem was never capability — it was trust. Black-box optimizers move your money and answer questions with a shrug. Autopilot takes the opposite bet: automation is only useful if you can leave it off, bound it when on, and audit every change.
Goals, not knobs — and only where you enable it
An Autopilot automation starts from a goal you write in plain terms — hold CPA under a target, pace a budget evenly, maximize reach at a frequency cap — plus guardrails: maximum daily spend change, channels it may touch, floors and ceilings on bids. Campaigns you leave manual stay manual.
On each run the automation evaluates current delivery, decides whether an action is warranted, and either acts or explains why it held. Both paths are recorded.
The audit log is the product
Every action carries its reasoning: what the automation saw, what it changed, and what it expected to happen. When a client asks why spend shifted from display to CTV on Tuesday, the answer is a log entry, not a guess.
Teams that want deeper control can register their own decision providers — HTTPS endpoints that receive the decision context and return the action — and run them in shadow mode against the built-in logic before trusting them with budget.