A buyer agent can only evaluate what your data can describe, and a seller agent can only represent what your data supports. Underneath both is the knowledge of who your readers are across every property and device and what you have permission to do with that information.
In our State of Agentic Advertising Report with Digiday, we asked publishers which capabilities matter most over the next 12 months. Nearly half (49%) chose improving first-party data and signals so AI agents can discover them. Only 5% chose building seller-side agents. The foundation comes first, and for most publishers, that foundation is identity.
What an Agent-Ready Identity Foundation Looks Like
At the center of the foundation sits a first-party identity graph. Agent readiness asks more of the graph than most publishers have needed so far, because a buyer agent queries it directly, at machine speed, with no sales conversation to smooth over the gaps.
For an identity graph to be agent-ready, it needs the following:
- Unified first-party data: Logins, newsletter signups, subscriptions, app events, and CRM records come together in one profile per reader or household. That single view gives every audience an accurate count of real people and a full picture of how each reader engages across your properties.
- Identity resolution: A buyer agent transacts on the ID frameworks its own platforms support. Resolution links your profiles across devices and identifiers, then maps them to those frameworks, so an audience built on your properties can be activated outside them.
- A growing authentication rate: Known readers anchor everything else. An increased authentication rate, meaning the share of traffic that is logged in or known by email, gives the graph its depth.
- Consent attached to each profile: An automated deal can't pause to consult the Legal team. When consent travels with each profile, documenting what it can be used for and where, the question gets answered before it’s asked.
- Real-time access: Buyer agents evaluate several publishers at once and may commit to the fastest credible option. Data that can be queried through an API, outside any single vendor's interface, lets you answer at the speed the request arrives.
From Identity Graph to Sellable Audiences
Mediavine's Charlie Morris described agentic curation as a way to “unlock a data asset that's been there but untapped.” For many publishers, that asset is the identity work already sitting in their systems.
Every audience a publisher sells, whether through a direct team, a PMP, or a buyer agent, inherits the strengths and gaps of the identity underneath it. A strong foundation shows up as audiences a buyer or buyer agent can size, trust, and activate.
Turning identity into sellable audiences requires the ability to:
- Size audiences honestly: Report audience size from deduplicated, resolved profiles instead of raw ID or cookie counts. Agentic buyers weigh signal quality across publishers, and a reach figure that drifts from delivery is a mark against you.
- Build audiences on demand: Define segments from what you know about authenticated readers. The higher your authentication rate, the more precisely you can match a brief, and the less you have to depend on the closest existing segment.
- Activate one audience anywhere: Resolve each audience to the ID frameworks your buyers' platforms use, and make it available through an API. That lets you activate your ID graph across deal types, running the same audience as a direct order, PMP, or programmatic guaranteed deal without rebuilding it.
- Close the loop: Bring delivery and performance data back into the profiles behind each audience. Over time, you’ll learn which audiences perform and which need refinement.
- Extend reach: Signal enrichment expands those audiences to include readers who never log in by layering verified attributes onto the profiles you already have. Accuracy depends on the profiles underneath, which is one more reason the foundation comes first.
The Identity Work That Makes You Agent-Ready
Buyer agents only know what your data tells them. A unified, resolved and consented identity graph makes that data describe real people. Honest sizing and flexible activation turn those people into audiences a buyer can act on, on any deal type, and most of that work starts with data you already collect.
For most publishers, that graph is already partly built. Strengthening your identity foundation comes down to measuring, connecting, and governing the data you already collect.
Optable's ID Switchboard resolves a publisher's graph to multiple ID frameworks in parallel, so no single vendor's ID limits where your audiences can go. If you're working out where your identity foundation stands, we can walk through it with you. Talk to our team.
