It’s agentic. Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun, dun dun dun dun dun…
Today, a collective of adtech companies rolled out AdCP — the Advertising Communication Protocol — with the full spec now live on GitHub.
Built to support AI-powered “agentic” media buying, the proposed standard integrates with the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent-to-Agent (A2A) frameworks, allowing autonomous agents to plan and activate ad campaigns across environments ranging from CTV to the open web.
Here’s what it would look like, in practice, at the most basic level:
The initiative is backed by a broad coalition, including founding members like Yahoo, PubMatic, and Scope3, and launch members such as Media.net, Magnite, and The Weather Company.
Why This Matters:
Everyone’s talking about agentic advertising—but to drive anywhere, you need a road first. That’s what this initiative is trying to build: an industry-wide protocol that makes adtech systems interoperable.
According to the group, this is a “single protocol that any platform can implement and any tool can use. An open standard that makes advertising technology work together, not against each other.”
To their point, agentic advertising needs a consistent, shared language to make buying, measuring, and managing media across platforms possible. AdCP is really the first serious, collaborative attempt at creating that foundation.
Experts React:
The responses on X were quick and wide-ranging. See some of the early reactions here, plus some posts from AdCP’s members.
Our Take:
AdCP could be one of the most significant interoperability efforts in digital advertising since OpenRTB (which this could replace or… maybe not?). The question is whether it will have staying power. Will publishers and platforms actually adopt it? It feels early. But, hey, it also seems promising.
FWIW, here’s what we wrote about agentic in adtech a few months ago.
Right now, very few adtech companies have true agentic capabilities—and that’s understandable. But building them won’t be easy. Most companies won’t get there without fundamentally rethinking their operating models, hiring talent to ensure agents remain safe and reliable, and investing heavily in compute infrastructure. That’s why larger independent adtech players and Big Tech are better positioned to take advantage of the shift. While innovation may come from startups, enterprise-grade agentic AI will likely belong to the big players.
AdTechRadar is owned by Chris Harihar, who leads PR at Mod Op. Yahoo and Media.net are Mod Op clients.
