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Right now, every adtech company is rolling out an AI agent for buying, selling, measurement, you name it. It sounds amazing, but there\u2019s a catch: Can they actually talk to each other?<\/strong><\/p>\n For this to work, these agents need a \u201cshared language\u201d so they can finish a campaign from start to finish without getting lost in translation.<\/p>\n Lately, everyone is buzzing about AdCP (Ad Context Protocol)<\/strong> as the solution, but it\u2019s also caused some serious head-spinning. People are panicking, asking: \u201cIs this replacing RTB? Do I need an MCP? What is the IAB doing?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n If your brain feels a little melted, don\u2019t worry. We\u2019re going to take a step back, cut through the hype, and break down what\u2019s actually game-changing.<\/p>\n To keep it on theme, let\u2019s explain it the way we\u2019d talk to a chatbot\u2026one prompt at a time.<\/p>\n The idea is that human ad buyers (advertisers, agencies, DSPs, etc.) can give natural language briefs with target audiences and goals to buyer agents, who will then build, negotiate, and execute campaigns based on interactions with specialized agents: seller agents, audience targeting agents, measurement agents, creative agents, etc.\u00a0<\/p>\n Basically, the goal is to truly automate all the different aspects of campaign setup and activation via agents. In the near term, there will still be a lot of humans involved to get the guardrails right.<\/p>\n AdCP is like a magic rulebook that helps robot friends in the ad world talk and play together super easily.*<\/p>\n Sure. In spirit, AdCP is a lot like OpenRTB, just forget all that bidding and auction stuff for a moment.<\/p>\n In the early days of real-time bidding, transactions were handled via proprietary server-to-server connections. Every exchange had its own response\/request schemas and mapping tables, and custom integrations were required when bringing on-demand or supply sources. To standardize and scale the nascent technology, the industry came together around the OpenRTB specification, enabling divergent tech to easily work together.<\/p>\n AdCP is meant to serve as a \u201cuniversal ads API\u201d to unify agentic advertising workflows across a campaign lifecycle, including campaign development, inventory discovery, activation, optimization, and even reporting. Like OpenRTB, it\u2019s an open protocol that\u2019s not owned by a specific company, but serves as a shared rulebook defining how different tech systems build, send, and interpret communications. This way, tech from different companies. In this case, AI agents performing a variety of functions can work with each other, the famed \u201cinteroperability.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s easiest to think about AdCP as a communication layer where buyer, seller, and other types of agents come together in a unified interface (rather than scattershot integrations) and speak the same language regarding campaign details: briefs, inventory avails, activation, measurement, etc.<\/p>\n But let\u2019s note another difference between OpenRTB and AdCP: while major SSPs like Magnite and PubMatic have built seller agents that leverage AdCP for communication, it is not the industry-accepted and widely adopted communication protocol for agentic transactions. Buyers and sellers could adopt other protocols or build and share proprietary ones.<\/p>\n MCP stands for Model Context Protocol<\/strong>; though it\u2019s now open and open-source, it was developed by Anthropic of Claude fame to serve as a standard framework for connecting AI agents to various external systems, tools, and data sources \u2013 anything from databases of content to business management software. You can even think about MCP as a super-sophisticated, high-functional next-gen API.<\/p>\n While AdCP was built on similar principles to MCP, its functions are different.\u00a0<\/p>\n MCP is about connecting AI agents and systems\/sources, while AdCP focuses on defining specific ad transaction automation tasks (e.g., brief delivery, inventory avails).\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n If AdCP is the meeting room where ad-related agents communicate in a shared language, MCP is the express shuttle that brings them to that room. That\u2019s why you\u2019ll hear people say, \u201cAdCP is built on top<\/em> of the MCP.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Yes, AdCP has three internal protocols (with a fourth proposed) to enable more robust agentic transactions.<\/p>\n In Q2 2026, the Curation Protocol<\/strong> standardizes how contextual targeting and brand safety requirements are both requested and applied to inventory packages.<\/p>\n It\u2019s more straightforward than all these standards and protocols stuff would have you believe. Let\u2019s focus on getting a campaign running in the Media Buy Protocol, which is helpfully very illustrative of how buyer agents can interact with the wider agent landscape.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a simplified workflow.<\/p>\n STEP 1:<\/strong> Write a natural language brief. The AgenticAdvertising.org offers this helpful example.<\/p>\n \u201cMike\u2019s Plumbing Services needs to reach homeowners in the Denver, Colorado area who might need plumbing services. We have $8,000 USD to spend from October 15-31, 2024. Looking for display and native formats to drive phone calls.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n STEP 2: <\/strong>The \u201cget_product<\/em>\u201d function will find inventory that matches the brief. The agent, likely with human oversight, will review offers, select applicable products, or revise the initial brief to get more suitable offerings.<\/p>\n STEP 3:<\/strong> Once satisfied with packages, use the \u201ccreate_media_buy<\/em>\u201d function to\u2026 Well, create a media buy. Share your timing, overall budget, then wait for approval from the seller agent\u2019s human monitor.<\/p>\n STEP 4:<\/strong> Once a human gives the thumbs up, upload creatives, activate the campaign, then monitor and optimize.<\/p>\n Would you not want humans involved? Considering problems with AI hallucinations, would you want to find out you just allocated 50% of your campaign budget to a publisher that doesn\u2019t exist? AdCP has many \u201chuman approval hooks,\u201d and it\u2019s widely agreed that humans will be intensely involved as the use of agents ramps up. In time, agents should develop best practices and will need less human hand-holding.<\/p>\n Yes! AdCP is about empowering direct buys\/sales across publishers at scale.<\/p>\n Agencies frequently complain they can\u2019t scale I\/Os for direct buys because going publisher to publisher is time-consuming and inefficient. They want to buy audiences and inventory en masse across a wide spectrum of media. While programmatic guaranteed has taken a lot of the pain out of the process by streamlining direct-buying on individual publishers, AdCP, as a communication layer, can theoretically facilitate guaranteed buys at scale across a wide range of publishers.<\/p>\n Despite all the change, AdCP is not replacing existing programmatic infrastructure.<\/p>\n Instead, it sits above it.<\/p>\n Not at all! If you think about it, private marketplace deals (PMPs) are direct campaigns, that is, negotiated deals that leverage RTB. AdCP can theoretically be used to establish PMPs and Deal IDs across publishers and at scale. Agentic transactions could make the setup and execution of Deal IDs far more efficient.\u00a0<\/p>\n AdCP establishes the deal, and RTB is used to execute.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n There will always be room for open programmatic, and not just potentially for \u201cunsold inventory.\u201d Open programmatic bids should compete against PMPs and guaranteed campaigns so publishers can better understand yield to price inventory and audiences.\u00a0<\/p>\n AI agents are driving the need for a major modernization of RTB workflows. The\u00a0 IAB Tech Lab\u2019s Agentic RTB Framework (ARTF) modernizes ad auctions to keep up with the speed of AI. Currently, auctions crawl because they constantly \u201ccall\u201d outside vendors for data. ARTF replaces these slow calls with containerization<\/strong>. Bottom line:<\/strong> ARTF moves the tech to the data, instead of sending the data to the tech.<\/p>\n And we\u2019re only scratching the surface regarding what\u2019s happening at IAB Tech Lab! That industry standards organization has put together an umbrella of standards called the Agentic Advertising Management Protocols (AAMP), a kind of master playbook for how buyer, seller, measurement, creative, and audience agents plug into a multifaceted programmatic environment, including RTB.<\/p>\n Yes, ARTF is a part of that, as well as Agentic Direct, which offers guardrails for buyer and seller agents\u2026 to negotiate and execute direct deals.<\/p>\n Bet you didn\u2019t see that twist coming AdTech sure is dramatic! It\u2019s a bit of a plot twist: Agentic Direct<\/strong> and AdCP<\/strong> aren\u2019t actually the same thing, but they can<\/em> be BFFs.<\/p>\n It really just comes down to which \u201cmeeting room\u201d the agents decide to hang out in. Plus, you can bet the buyers will have a huge say in which one becomes the favorite.<\/p>\n Yeah, it\u2019s a lot, right? And once we start digging into the weeds, we lose focus on the true potential of AI: making media buying and selling faster, more efficient, better performing, and easier.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n We get it\u2026 it\u2019s easy to get lost in the \u201calphabet soup\u201d of all these protocols, but don\u2019t let the tech talk scare you. At the end of the day, AI is just here to make buying and selling ads faster and way less of a headache.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the \u201cvibe check\u201d on what actually matters:<\/p>\n Your choice of self\u2011serve or direct\u2011sales platform will determine how quickly you can plug into whichever rulebooks win out:\u00a0 AdCP, AAMP, or others, without ripping out your whole stack.\u00a0<\/p>\n AI definitely helped with the research, but this is very human-created. See? AI isn\u2019t even replacing the job of bloggers yet.<\/p>\n Speaking of humans and AI working together, we\u2019re not just talking about this shift, we\u2019re helping build it. That\u2019s why DanAds is officially a Founding Member of AdCP.<\/strong><\/p>\n By becoming a Founding Member of the Ad Context Protocol (AdCP), we\u2019re helping ensure that self-serve advertising infrastructure is represented in the evolution of AdCP, and that publisher-direct monetization remains a core component of the emerging agent-driven advertising ecosystem.<\/p>\n AdCP signals a shift toward open standards designed to enable interoperability between publishers, advertisers, and adtech platforms, replacing isolated systems with a more connected, agent-ready infrastructure layer.<\/p>\n To explore what this means in practice and why it matters now, read the full DanAds announcement.<\/p>\nPROMPT: So what\u2019s the big idea behind agentic transactions anyway?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
PROMPT: Huh. OK, that makes sense, and I guess AdCP is key here. Can you explain what AdCP is to me, like I\u2019m 3 years old?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
PROMPT: Um\u2026 That\u2019s not actually helpful. Why don\u2019t you explain it to me like I\u2019ve been in adtech for a while, and all this new jargon is making my head spin?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
PROMPT: I keep hearing about this MCP thing. What\u2019s that gotta do with it?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
PROMPT: Ah, this is starting to come together! Though I hear there are separate protocols inside AdCP. What?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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PROMPT: Sheesh, so many protocols, but how does it actually work?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
PROMPT: There seems to be a lot of human activity required with these agentic transactions.<\/strong><\/h2>\n
PROMPT: Right, right. Also, this all sounds like it\u2019s about\u2026 automating direct, guaranteed campaigns.<\/strong><\/h2>\n
PROMPT: Then I guess RTB is a goner, huh?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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PROMPT: OK, then AdCP isn\u2019t replacing RTB\u2026 But what about open programmatic?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
PROMPT: So that\u2019s why there\u2019s this ARTF thing? Isn\u2019t that about AI, too?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Let\u2019s break it down:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
PROMPT: Oh boy. I thought my head hurt before when I was ingesting all that info about AdCP.<\/strong><\/h2>\n
PROMPT: WHAT?!? You mean\u2026 Agentic Direct is a competitor standard to AdCP?!?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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PROMPT: Oh man. I can\u2019t take any more. My brain is full.<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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PROMPT: Wow, that makes me feel better. Wait, did AI actually write this?<\/h2>\n