Programmatic scaled because the industry agreed on shared rules for how machines buy and sell. Agentic advertising needs the same kind of buy-in. Katsur explained that IAB Tech Lab's Agentic Ad Management Protocol (AAMP) was developed to build on existing standards and taxonomies rather than replace them, and that agentic standards are being built to support both direct and programmatic buys. IAB Tech Lab is also building an agent registry to add trust and transparency to agent-to-agent transactions.
Nicol brought the view from a major media company. "We're in an industry built on great standards," he said, calling them "the building blocks of success." For media companies, he added, agentic advertising is the first real opportunity to innovate in a long time.
The alternative set of standards is AgenticAdvertising.org's Ad Context Protocol (AdCP); rather than retrofitting programmatic standards, AdCP provides all-new open standards for agentic discovery, planning, buying, selling, and measurement. Regardless of what set of standards gains the most traction, the truth is that interoperability is key.
Katsur also posed the timing question directly: is it still early, or does the industry need to align now? Nicol's advice for the room was to ask how automation and AI are built into their vendors' product roadmaps.
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