It’s all agents, all the time, baby.
Yesterday, the IAB Tech Lab followed up last week’s launch of the User Context Protocol (UCP) — which aims to standardize how AI agents share end-user signals like identity, context, and performance — with another release: the Agentic RTB Framework (or, ugh, “ARTF” — rolls right off the tongue).
ARTF is designed to standardize containerized, agentic real-time bidding within programmatic auctions.
Not to be confused with the Ad Context Protocol (AdCP), launched a few weeks ago by a coalition of 20+ companies, which focuses on how AI agents “talk” to each other for planning, buying, and optimization.
Why This Matters:
Clearly, something’s going on in adtech.
Using Muck Rack’s media monitoring database, we found that last year there were roughly 177 mentions of “AI agents” and “advertisers” across ad, business, and tech media. In 2025, that number has surged to 442 — and the year’s not even over. That’s roughly 150% growth.
The takeaway: the market is clearly shifting. Advertisers want more “easy buttons” in digital advertising, and agentic solutions are key to making that possible — though we’re still mostly in the infrastructure and standards phase.
With that said, there has been some rapid advancements. This week, for example, both Amazon and Google have rolled out agentic solutions for their respective ad platforms.
Experts React:
In a post on X, IAB Tech Lab CEO Tony Katsur praised the new framework, writing:
“ARTF establishes a true control plane for an agentic future, where autonomous agents and specialized software enhance the bidstream in real time with rigor, safety, and interoperability.”
You can see his full post on X here:
Our Take:
ARTF formalizes a concept that’s been bubbling under the surface for months: letting AI systems participate directly in programmatic decisioning. It’s still early, but this move signals that agentic infrastructure is about to become a competitive differentiator for major platforms. Whoever implements it first — and does it well, of course — could shape the next decade of adtech architecture.
