Inside the debate over agentic advertising and standards
Ads Context Protocol, or “AdCP,” launched a little more than 100 days ago to much fanfare, great excitement, and high praise, while also prompting notable approbrium. Digiday attempted to gauge market engagement after the dust had settled, and backers have started to put in the hard yards.
First, it’s worth a recap of what exactly AdCP is — for some, it’s an open-source bridge between today’s programmatic infrastructure and the dawn of the agentic era — or, as Digiday’s Tim Peterson phrased it, “openRTB for the agentic AI era” (see video below).
As mentioned, while proponents frame these protocols as open and democratizing, critics warn they could simply shift — rather than dismantle — existing power dynamics among platforms, intermediaries, and publishers.
To this end, backers of the initiative — the founding members are predominantly ad tech entities, although there is support from agencies, publishers, and marketers also privy to these developments — point to the structure of the Agentic Advertising Organization, i.e., the entity founded to oversee the governance of such protocols.
“The AAO,” as early participants are calling it, consists of dozens of committees, including industry councils, regional chapters, and working groups, with the aim of representing brands, agencies, publishers, and technology providers, according to its official website. The non-profit organization intends to elect a 40-strong board of directors at its first AGM, currently scheduled for April, with its interim board consisting of former IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg and influential ad tech figure and Scope3 founder Brian O’Kelley, among others.
Ruben Schreurs, group chief executive officer at Ebiquity and a member of AAO’s interim board, noted the initial involvement of major agency holding companies, household-name brands, and tech providers as testament to the importance of agentic AI in enhancing media planning and execution. “Ads Context Protocol was just the first initiative,” he told Digiday, referencing other open-source initiatives, such as sales agents, AdAgents.json, etc.
AAO-backers describe the aim of the project as providing “connectors” that let media buyers and owners use their chosen AI-powered agents to connect directly to the media ecosystem, mirroring a broader evolution from the industry’s earlier infrastructure requirements, in which companies were forced to use specific interfaces.
“It’s like we’re saying, ‘We don’t care if you use our user-interface,’” he added, referencing recent remarks made to Digiday by Yahoo (a founding member of AAO that declined to comment when approached for comment). “Just log in to our [demand-side platform] DSP, provide the excellent plumbing discovery access, and you can use whatever U/I you want.”
“It’s like we’re saying, ‘We don’t care if you use our user-interface,’” he added, referencing recent remarks made to Digiday by Yahoo (a founding member of AAO that declined to comment when approached for comment). “Just log in to our [demand-side platform] DSP, provide the excellent plumbing discovery access, and you can use whatever U/I you want.”
However, such developments do not necessarily mean the era of programmatic media trading is dead, nor do APIs or U/Is, etc.; rather, the introduction of model context protocols (MCPs) represents an improvement over the earlier rigidity required by platform providers. “I see the agentic-AI initiatives, which aren’t just limited to the AOO or AdCP, as new incremental ways of planning, discovering, trading media, but also optimizing and generating creative,” added Schruers. “But right now, they’re not immediately replacing anything else, per se.”
John Goulding, chief strategy officer at MiQ, a company that is conducting early AdCP-tests with its clients, using an agent it developed within its Sigma platform, plus others, to connect with ad servers and DSPs, said his company is conducting such tests, which range “in the five-figure territory,” to realize benefits that were formerly too cumbersome to warrant the effort.
He further told Digiday his outfit hoped to reap the benefits of any newfound standardization with its latest tests. “In general, we don’t do direct buys because it’s too operationally clunky, because there’s no standardization,” he said. “So, [we want to explore], can we unlock unique datasets or contextual opportunities, or can we get a higher share-of-voice against high-value audiences?”
For Goulding, “operationalizing” more direct media buys through user-agents can help expand its reach. “Some of our buying-mix might start to go more towards what I’m calling ‘agent publisher-direct,’” he said, noting how MiQ also hoped to realize other pockets of demand, such as realizing efficiencies with programmatic guaranteed buys.
Anne Coghlan, co-founder and COO of AOO founding member Scope3, told Digiday that the initiative was intended to reflect the fact that the vast majority of ad buys are still conducted through direct relationships – be that through traditional media, digital direct deals, programmatic guaranteed, etc. – not ad auctions.
She further informed Digiday that Scope3 is working with publishers to make their entire catalog more discoverable to brand agents and aims to convince them that this will encourage buyers to better value their audiences.
Hesitation
Anastasia-Nikita Bansal, CEO of Teqblaze, a company working to further expand sell-side AdCP testing, explained to Digiday how her outfit is working with approximately a dozen such entities, using its sales agent to integrate with the Scope3 platform, even those that are not currently its customers, without upfront fees.
“We have a waiting list of publishers and SSPs who really want to test out AdCP as a concept, because the sell-side doesn’t have a clear understanding of the benefits right now. This is what I hear from all the companies I talked to,” she said, adding that many do not know what to expect, even if they do want to explore agentic-buying, as in many cases, publishers lack the skillset required.
Scope3’s Coghlan noted that AdCP’s backers aimed to reassure media owners that the development of agentic buying wouldn’t further erode how their ad inventory is valued. “Take LiveNation as an example,” she noted in an emailed statement.
It went on to state, “They’re a media company where the bulk of their inventory lives way outside the rectangles of display ads. All those bespoke sponsorship offerings – entertainment meet-and-greets and high-value brand experiences they can offer – can finally be represented for their true value and at scale. Before, with such a small team, there was no way to make all of that easily discoverable and buyable to brands. Now agents can surface it.”
Resistance over transparency
However, that’s not to say the evolution of agentic buying won’t be without resistance, with the newly appointed CEO of MINT, Louisa Wong, an executive with extensive experience in the agency holding company landscape, informing Digiday that the restraints aren’t technical.
“It’s that the ecosystem isn’t ready for the level of transparency this actually requires,” she noted, adding that agentic-buying threatens to expose opaque practices that have been plaguing the industry for years. “AdCP is a good effort at bringing more transparency, but it only standardizes agent communication. Someone still needs to standardize the processes those agents execute. You can’t have AI agents negotiating multi-million-dollar strategies without systems that track decisions and outcomes with true precision.
Ozone’s Craig Tuck, informed Digiday that the publisher-focused sales platform was likewise testing AdCP with its own seller-agent, but he similarly observed the potential for transparency concerns. “The biggest risk we see with an innovation like AdCP is decreasing transparency and control rather than increasing,” he observed. “important. If agentic buying is thought of as a ‘set and forget’ solution, we run the perilous risk of recreating a short-term market that undermines the quality and trust needed to deliver the outcomes advertisers need.”
In the swarm of social media commentary since the unveiling of AdCP and AAO, there has been much handwringing over the potential for current developments resulting in a further fragmented landscape, whereby competing protocols could force buyers, publishers, and vendors to choose sides or bear the hardship of supporting multiple technologies.
Fragmentation
However, Budi Tanzi, svp, product and solution engineering, Experian Marketing Services, noted how evolution is likely on the horizon, but major industry bodies are emphasizing agentic execution integrated into the existing digital advertising foundation.
“We may see companies offer agent-native execution utilities, while others differentiate through proprietary optimization, exclusive inventory access, or intuitive controls built on trusted foundations,” he added. “When something becomes the ‘assumed future’ in one cycle, definitions and trade-offs get skipped.”
In observations shared with Digiday, Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab, noted how his outfit is not reinventing the language of digital advertising but extending globally adopted standards — such as OpenRTB, OpenDirect, AdCOM, and Data Labels — with an agentic layer.
“When multiple groups try to solve the same problem independently, you get confusion, wasted engineering effort, and inconsistent implementations that never fully scale. Standards proliferation is a real cost to the industry,” he added.
Noting how “we have lived through this cycle many times in ad tech,” Katsur further urged closer collaboration to ensure interoperability and more durable changes. ”If an initiative believes its work is foundational and meant for broad adoption, the logical step is to bring it into a neutral forum where everyone can participate and where long-term stewardship is clear.”
