Ad tech industry debates agentic AI protocol amid transparency concerns

Six advertising technology companies introduced the Ad Context Protocol on October 15, 2025, positioning the framework as a unified interface for artificial intelligence agents to manage campaigns across platforms. The announcement divided industry observers between those who view the protocol as necessary infrastructure and critics who question whether another standard addresses fundamental problems in programmatic advertising.

The protocol emerged from Scope3, Yahoo, PubMatic, Swivel, Triton Digital, and Optable. According to the companies involved, AdCP enables AI agents to discover inventory, compare pricing, and activate campaigns across different advertising platforms without requiring custom integration work for each system.

Lindsay Rowntree, COO at ExchangeWire, raised questions about the protocol's timing and potential impact during a podcast discussion. "I feel like it is too soon," Rowntree said. "I don't think as an industry we've grappled with AI yet."

Black box transparency problem

The protocol introduction highlights a fundamental tension between automation promises and transparency requirements that have plagued programmatic advertising for years. Rowntree identified this as a critical unresolved issue.

"Agentic AI which I think the industry hasn't grappled with yet is it's a giant black box," Rowntree stated during the ExchangeWire podcast. "Any standard has got to address that and address the transparency issue that we have been battling for as long as this industry began. This doesn't address that yet I don't think and it really really needs to."

The transparency concern extends beyond technical implementation. Augustine Fou, a fraud researcher and marketing consultant, told The Current that agentic AI does not eliminate bad actors in the supply chain. Fou noted that more automation means less transparency, and agents can still act on behalf of people with bad incentives.

Industry analysis shows that only 36 percent of post-transaction programmatic budgets reach valid, viewable, measurable, and non-fraudulent impressions according to 2023 research. The question facing the industry centers on whether new protocols will address these foundational issues or simply add another layer of complexity.

Questioning the power structure

Rowntree questioned the rationale behind the specific group of companies bringing out these standards. "Is it giving that group of people too much power when should it be something that's handled more by an IAB or somebody that doesn't have the same skin in the game?" she asked.

The concern reflects broader industry debate about who should establish standards for emerging technologies. Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab, told The Current that the industry does not need another trade group. He noted that IAB Tech Lab operates open-source structures where anyone can work, including on projects like Ads.Cert. Katsur stated that the organization has already solved some of the problems the AdCP initiative attempts to address.

John Still, head of content at ExchangeWire, characterized the announcement as potentially premature. "I think this has stirred up quite a lot of thought in the industry," Still said. "It was announced as the next big thing and agentic is finally kind of setting out a protocol for the way agentic AI is going to communicate."

Still questioned whether the protocol represents programmatic advertising promises repackaged with new technology. "Is this just programmatic back again? Rehashed? It's the same promises, but now we've got new tech," he stated.

Disintermediation paradox

The potential for agentic AI to reshape advertising technology's structure presents a paradox. Rowntree explained that the technology could bring sellers and buyers closer together, similar to how transactions worked before programmatic infrastructure developed.

"The way I'm understanding agentic and what it could do for the industry is that it can bring sellers and buyers closer together," Rowntree said. "This is bringing it back to taking out the middle man. But then our industry is built on middlemen."

She questioned why those intermediaries would participate in building standards that could potentially reduce their role. "If we're taking out the middleman, what does that mean for the very structure of the adtech industry? And then why are those middlemen getting involved in building standards for it?" Rowntree asked.

Brian O'Kelley, CEO of Scope3 and a founding member of AdCP, addressed concerns about agent trustworthiness in a blog post. The protocol emerged partly from recognition that walled gardens have not been shy about planning to use agents to help their clients plan, buy, measure and optimize campaigns, according to John Hoctor, CEO and co-founder of Newton Research and an AdCP founding member.

Technical specifications and adoption questions

Documentation shows that AdCP provides nine core tasks covering the complete advertising lifecycle. The get_products function discovers advertising inventory using natural language campaign briefs. The create_media_buy function launches campaigns with budget allocation, timing parameters, and promoted offering specifications.

The protocol provides both Model Context Protocol and Agent-to-Agent Protocol access methods. MCP integration enables direct tool calls from AI assistants, while A2A support facilitates complex workflows requiring multi-agent collaboration and approval chains.

Platform implementation varies across advertising systems. Google Ad Manager creates Orders containing LineItems that map to protocol packages. Kevel creates Campaigns containing Flights corresponding to packages. Triton Digital follows similar Campaign and Flight structures optimized for audio advertising workflows.

Rowntree questioned adoption prospects given the absence of major platforms. "So far none of the big dogs have signed up for it so Google, Trade Desk, Amazon DSP," she noted. "They don't technically need to but if they aren't involved does that mean we're creating more fragmentation by having this new agentic AI standards walled garden versus a Google walled garden, a Trade Desk walled garden, Amazon DSP walled garden?"

Joe Root, co-founder of Permutive, expressed concerns that AdCP could distract from foundational performance issues. Root told The Current that if the product does not compete on incremental outcomes, it does not matter. He suggested the protocol runs the risk of publishers jumping to create agents when they have not fixed the foundational problem of matching performance with walled gardens like Google and Meta.

According to Root's conversations with publishers, no companies are forecasting transacting a single dollar against AdCP at present. He characterized the protocol as primarily allowing the industry to congregate and get the ball rolling at this stage.

Historical context and standards comparison

Rowntree drew comparisons to previous industry standards to illustrate adoption challenges. She cited ads.txt as an example of successful implementation due to its simplicity. Publishers could implement the standard by placing code on their domain, enabling demand-side platforms to filter bad quality inventory while letting good inventory through.

Open RTB represented another successful framework that became the foundation of programmatic advertising. However, Rowntree noted that Open RTB 3.0 faced adoption challenges because the new version required complete recoding. "Everyone went, I'm not going to adopt that. Why would I do that? This took so long in the first place. I'm not just redoing everything in the back end," she explained.

The Prebid example illustrated how power dynamics affect standards adoption. While Prebid was built by publishers for publishers and offered instant revenue lift, Trade Desk's involvement shifted the dynamics when the company announced changes to transaction IDs. "Trade Desk were like, well screw you. We're going to create our own version called OpenAds," Rowntree recounted.

She explained that Trade Desk told publishers that if they wanted Trade Desk demand, they would have to use OpenAds instead of Prebid. "That creates more fragmentation and I feel like a standard unless it literally is a standard that can be applied to everybody and everyone understands it and everyone agrees with it can't really be a standard," Rowntree concluded.

Market context and investment trends

The timing aligns with substantial enterprise investment in agentic AI adoption. McKinsey data indicates 1.1 billion dollars in equity investment flowed into agentic AI in 2024, with job postings related to this technology increasing 985 percent from 2023 to 2024.

Multiple advertising technology platforms announced AI agent capabilities throughout 2025. LiveRamp introduced agentic orchestration on October 1, enabling autonomous AI agents to access its identity resolution and audience activation platform. Adobe announced Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator on September 10 for managing agents across Adobe and third-party ecosystems. Amazon launched agentic AI capabilities on September 17 for autonomous marketplace management.

The protocol addresses challenges identified by industry analysts examining programmatic infrastructure. Traditional demand-side platforms require months of custom integration work, maintain fragmented reporting systems, and impose vendor lock-in through proprietary interfaces.

Industry veteran David Kohl cautioned on October 15 that the newly announced protocol represents a premature focus on automation tools before addressing fundamental structural issues plaguing digital advertising. Kohl argued that rushing to build agentic advertising infrastructure without clear goals risks repeating the mistakes that created today's programmatic supply chain dysfunction.

Kohl raised specific concerns about security and fraud prevention. "Lest ye forget fraud–the next generation of agentic automation must bake in stronger security and authentication from the start," Kohl noted. This warning gains significance against the backdrop of ongoing transaction identifier disputes that eliminated buyers' ability to identify duplicate bid requests across different supply-side platforms on August 27, 2025.

Industry division on protocol necessity

Hoctor acknowledged that agents decisioning directly into the media buying process is complicated. He suggested agents could perform other tasks like analytics and measurement in the near term while more complex implementations develop.

Still noted that as a set of standards, a suggested set of standards for agentic AI, the protocol is interesting given that agentic AI is coming and that bots will communicate with each other. "How this is going to set that out in terms of the ad buying process for agentic is fascinating," Still said.

However, Still questioned the immediate impact. "I don't know what impact it'll have immediately, but it's more the concept of it that interests me," he stated. "Is it just talk about ease of buying, talk about breaking down the boundaries?"

Rowntree suggested the announcement could accelerate industry adoption timelines regardless of the protocol's ultimate success. "I think it does start something that is going to start a bit of a juggernaut and it could even make the adoption of agentic quicker because it's on people's radar now and they go oh I wasn't thinking about doing this for five years but actually now there's a standard around it maybe I should be looking into this more," she said.

The protocol launch occurs as the advertising industry faces increasing pressure toward automation while campaign complexity grows. However, technical community debate reveals growing skepticism among practitioners about whether substantial investment in agentic AI aligns with actual technical requirements.

Market implications and future outlook

The six founding members represent different segments of the advertising technology ecosystem. PubMatic operates as a supply-side platform connecting publishers with buyers. Scope3 previously focused on carbon emissions measurement for digital advertising before pivoting to agentic advertising. Swivel delivers audience targeting and analytics capabilities. Triton specializes in audio advertising technology for streaming and podcasting. Optable focuses on privacy-first data collaboration. Yahoo brings established relationships with premium publishers and buyers.

Financial markets have begun recognizing programmatic advertising's mainstream importance despite ongoing transparency challenges. The Trade Desk's inclusion in the S&P 500 index on July 18, 2025, demonstrates the sector's financial significance. The company processed 12 billion dollars in gross spend through its platform in fiscal year 2024 while maintaining customer retention rates exceeding 95 percent.

The programmatic advertising industry now faces a choice between two paths: adopting new protocols rapidly in hopes of capturing market share, or pausing to establish shared goals and measurable success metrics before widespread implementation. The debate reflects fundamental questions about whether the advertising technology sector will learn from past mistakes or repeat them in new forms.

Rowntree emphasized that transparency must be central to any standard moving forward. Her concerns about agentic AI being a giant black box highlight the challenge facing protocol developers: building systems that automate complex workflows while maintaining the visibility that advertisers and publishers need to trust the technology.

The criticism matters because transparency issues have resulted in only 36 percent of post-transaction programmatic budgets reaching valid, viewable, measurable impressions according to 2023 research. Industry participants debate whether to adopt new automation standards rapidly or establish clear objectives first, with implications for how the next generation of advertising technology will function.

Timeline

• October 15, 2025: Six advertising technology companies launch Ad Context Protocol with Scope3, Yahoo, PubMatic, Swivel, Triton Digital, and Optable as founding members
• October 15, 2025: Industry veteran David Kohl posts criticism calling AdCP premature
• October 1, 2025: LiveRamp introduces agentic orchestration capabilities
• September 10, 2025: Adobe announces Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator
• August 27, 2025: Prebid.org implements transaction ID changes eliminating cross-exchange visibility
• July 21, 2025: Ari Paparo analyzes how agentic AI threatens DSP business models
• July 18, 2025: The Trade Desk joins S&P 500 index
• 2024: McKinsey reports 1.1 billion dollars in equity investment flowing into agentic AI with 985 percent increase in job postings

Summary

Who: Six advertising technology companies including Scope3, Yahoo, PubMatic, Swivel, Triton Digital, and Optable launched the Ad Context Protocol. Industry observers including Lindsay Rowntree from ExchangeWire, David Kohl, Joe Root from Permutive, and Anthony Katsur from IAB Tech Lab responded with criticism and questions about the protocol's timing and structure.

What: The Ad Context Protocol provides a unified interface for artificial intelligence agents to discover inventory, compare pricing, and activate campaigns across different advertising platforms. Built on Anthropic's Model Context Protocol, it includes nine core tasks covering the complete advertising lifecycle with both Model Context Protocol and Agent-to-Agent Protocol access methods.

When: The protocol launched on October 15, 2025, coinciding with substantial enterprise investment in agentic AI. McKinsey data shows 1.1 billion dollars in equity investment flowed into agentic AI in 2024, with job postings increasing 985 percent from 2023 to 2024.

Where: The protocol affects the programmatic advertising ecosystem globally, though major platforms including Google, Trade Desk, and Amazon DSP have not yet signed up for adoption. The announcement occurred during a period when multiple advertising technology platforms throughout 2025 introduced their own AI agent capabilities.

Why: The protocol addresses long-standing fragmentation issues where each advertising platform maintains proprietary application programming interfaces. However, critics argue the launch is premature because the industry has not resolved fundamental transparency problems. Lindsay Rowntree stated that agentic AI represents a giant black box that any standard must address, particularly given that transparency issues have plagued programmatic advertising since its inception.