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Advertising platforms merge behind AI agents as infrastructure scramble intensifies

Amazon, Google, and IAB Tech Lab accelerate autonomous campaign tools while publishers face measurement challenges from bot-like agentic traffic flooding platforms.

Luis Rijo

• 14 min read
AI agents automate ad campaigns with brain directing connected advertising tools and platforms
AI agents automate ad campaigns with brain directing connected advertising tools and platforms

The advertising industry compressed months of infrastructure development into a single week. Amazon unified its DSP and sponsored ads console on November 10, launching AI agents for campaign management the following day while extending its Creative Agent to television formats. Google made its Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor available to all English-language accounts on November 12. The IAB Tech Lab introduced its Agentic RTB Framework on November 13, establishing containerized auction standards designed to accommodate autonomous buying systems.

These announcements arrived alongside Amazon's closed beta launch of a Model Context Protocol Server on November 13, enabling natural language interactions with advertising APIs. The convergence signals an acceleration beyond isolated pilot programs toward production-ready agent deployments that handle campaign creation, optimization, and analytics through conversational interfaces rather than manual configuration.

Platform moves followed comprehensive framework guidelines released by Google Cloud in November 2025. The 54-page technical document established five-level architecture standards for autonomous systems, projecting the agentic AI market could reach $1 trillion by 2035-2040. Google Cloud reported that 88% of early adopter organizations implementing AI agents showed positive ROI, with 52% of organizations using generative AI also deploying agents in production.

The infrastructure buildout reflects substantial economic stakes. Amazon's third-quarter advertising revenue reached $17.7 billion, growing 22% year-over-year. The company's annual advertising will likely generate approximately $70 billion in 2025, with roughly 90% in Sponsored Listings competing directly with Google Search and emerging AI search, The Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green noted during an earnings call on November 7.

Platforms collapse fragmented workflows

Amazon's Campaign Manager integration eliminated fragmented workflows requiring advertisers to manage sponsored ads and programmatic DSP campaigns through separate interfaces. The consolidation occurred at the company's annual unBoxed conference on November 10, where Amazon introduced multiple infrastructure changes designed to simplify full-funnel advertising regardless of brand size or internal expertise.

An agentic mode called Full-Funnel Campaigns can set up and adjust multi-format campaigns across Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, display, and streaming television from a single prompt. The system interprets media plans, builds campaign structures, recommends budgets, and surfaces Amazon Marketing Cloud insights through natural language processing.

"We just constantly hear how complex it is right now," Kelly MacLean, Amazon Ads vice president of engineering, science and product, told AdExchanger. "So that's really where we've anchored a lot on hearing their feedback, figuring out how we can drive even more simplicity."

Amazon introduced unified advertiser accounts in October 2025, enabling single-login access to all advertising products across regions. Campaign Manager extends this consolidation to the actual management interface rather than just account access. The company made Marketing Cloud directly accessible to sponsored ads advertisers on September 16, eliminating traditional onboarding barriers.

The Creative Agent expansion on November 11 brought video generation capabilities to Streaming TV and Sponsored TV advertising formats. The agentic AI tool, initially introduced in September as a conversational creative partner within Creative Studio, now operates through the unified Amazon Ads console and handles video advertising across Amazon's streaming inventory.

"Think about the creative agent as a creative director," Jay Richman, vice president of product and technology at Amazon Ads, stated. The agent analyzes brand online presence—product detail pages, visible social media accounts, and previously published material—along with proprietary Amazon shopping data unavailable elsewhere.

Amazon also announced an expansion to Marketing Cloud's ad traffic lookback window from 13 months to 25 months on November 11. The extension enables AMC customers to analyze advertising performance across more than two full calendar years. The expansion became available in the United States and Canada on November 11, with additional regional rollouts scheduled for first quarter 2026 covering the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France, Austria, Turkey, and Japan.

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Google deploys Gemini-powered advisors

Google announced on November 12 that Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor would reach all English-language accounts across Google Ads and Google Analytics in early December. The tools represent the company's implementation of agentic conversational experiences powered by Gemini models, designed to accelerate data analysis and campaign management.

Dan Taylor, Google's vice president of global ads, described the products as "partners that learn from an advertiser's unique datasets." Ads Advisor embeds within the Google Ads console, using AI to analyze unique data, specific business goals, landing pages, and campaign performance to generate personalized recommendations.

The December rollout marks the first time these tools become available beyond limited testing groups. Google initially unveiled both advisors at Marketing Live in May 2025. Think Week 2025 in September introduced expanded agentic capabilities with phased rollouts reaching 50% of eligible Ads Advisor users and 10% of Analytics Advisor users for initial testing.

Ads Advisor speeds up campaign pace by transforming loose campaign briefs into actionable media plans almost instantly. The AI handles campaign optimization, recommending new media channels or search terms while acting as what Taylor called a "powerful brainstorming and generation tool" for creative strategies.

Analytics Advisor targets large advertisers or site operators seeking to remove manual processes of pulling data and the data science knowledge required to analyze large datasets. Advertisers can use natural language prompts to prepare reports, with the platform agent linking directly to relevant reports and providing comprehensive insights on advertising campaign performance.

Research published in July 2025 found that Google Gemini demonstrated a 6% error rate when answering PPC-related questions, the lowest among five major AI platforms tested. The systems' limitations around accuracy and relevance place responsibility on advertisers to verify recommendations before implementation, maintaining human oversight while leveraging AI capabilities.

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Protocol proliferation accelerates

The IAB Tech Lab introduced its Agentic RTB Framework v1.0 for public comment on November 13. The framework establishes technical standards for containerized programmatic auctions designed to accommodate AI agents operating across advertising platforms. Netflix, Paramount, The Trade Desk, Yahoo, and others provided support for the standard.

Tony Katsur, CEO of the IAB Tech Lab, explained that companies need to better "enrich, inform and analyze programmatic trading, or the bid stream itself." The framework proposes containerization of architecture rather than having buying endpoints like DSPs and SSPs ping between separate data centers.

Multiple AI agents compete for limited advertising infrastructure capacity and resources
Multiple AI agents compete for limited advertising infrastructure capacity and resources

Today's ad auctions take several hundred milliseconds as communication travels from supply-side platforms and ad exchanges to demand-side platforms, to data vendors, and back again—often in different cloud environments. The Agentic RTB Framework seeks to enhance auction efficiency by redeploying the RTB process inside a containerized environment so different transaction parts can run closer together.

Measurement vendors could function as containerized agents within DSPs, more easily identifying fraudulent impressions before bidding. "Containerization is inherently secure," Katsur stated, meaning the DSP wouldn't have access to the measurement company's code or software while maintaining open communication channels.

Adam Heimlich, CEO of Chalice, a custom algorithm startup for ad buyers, noted this efficiency level "has previously only existed in walled gardens and other single server network entities." Marketers in industries like finance or pharma with high volumes of sensitive data, or CTV sellers wary of exposing show-level data in the open bidstream, now have trusted environments where that data could be stored and used for advertising without the same privacy or consumer data security risks.

The Agentic RTB Framework arrived as the third agentic standard in under a month. The Ad Context Protocol surfaced first in October, followed by Universal Context Protocol. The IAB Tech Lab announced on November 5 that LiveRamp had "donated" the Universal Context Protocol framework for how AI agents communicate and recognize human users and other agentic technology in online advertising.

Digiday analysis published November 14 noted the acceleration since June, when only about 20% of ad ops executives attending an IAB U.K. meeting had heard the term "agentic AI." The proliferation of standards reflects an industry attempting to build structure before agents scale. None of the new standards attempt to replace OpenRTB but sit alongside it, allowing DSPs to avoid rebuilding systems overnight while publishers test agent workflows without detonating yield.

Agent implementation remains advisory

Digiday reporting from November 12 found that agents and agentic AI have caught the industry's imagination but remain mostly limited to advisory and information-retrieval roles. Specialist media agents are backseat drivers, advising rather than placing spend, while supply-side agents help consolidate data and assist executives.

LG Ad Solutions created a platform called Agentiv designed to coordinate its own agents and those belonging to other advertisers, agencies, or ad tech players. Dave Rudnick, chief technology officer at LG Ad Solutions, stated the system's media effectiveness agent cut the time taken to compile campaign reports from two days to five hours.

None of the agents LG designed would handle money. "Today, they're making recommendations," Rudnick explained. "We want to be able to allow the experts to continue to control the knobs." LG Ads is now discussing with agency holding companies and brands about integrating Agentiv into their own nascent agentic systems. The platform will include up to 30 distinct agents.

Amazon's approach maintains similar guardrails. "This move is really about democratization," Jeff Cohen, chief business development officer at Skai, stated. "Amazon's bringing the same advanced capabilities that big brands have relied on—closed-loop measurement, audience expansion, and full-funnel optimization—into a single, AI-powered console that any advertiser can use."

Digiday analysis from November 12 suggested Amazon follows the same playbook Google and Meta have refined for years: automate more of the planning and buying that agencies once handled. The automation isn't an overt bid to push agencies aside but to capture the long tail—thousands of advertisers who were never going to hire an agency in the first place.

When setup, pacing, and AMC query logic become automated, the operational "button-pushing" advantages that were always easiest for clients to squeeze on fees diminish. What becomes more valuable is work agencies already want to pursue: audience strategy, creative platforming, testing frameworks, and guidance on how budgets should move across the funnel over time.

Publishers confront agentic traffic measurement

Agentic visitors are becoming a more complex problem for some publishers. The measurement issue centers on the inability to clearly separate agentic visitors from humans. Some buyers are getting concerned, and a few are already pulling ad spend.

Agentic visitors describe when AI assistants or automated agents—like OpenAI's ChatGPT and now its browser Atlas, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews—visit and read publisher content on behalf of human users. Often, they don't generate traditional pageviews or ad impressions, meaning publishers can't monetize the visit.

TollBit, which helps publishers charge AI bots for content access, mentioned in its Q2 report published before Atlas hit the market that the next wave of AI visitors increasingly look like humans on sites. Digital publisher Salon had a "mid-sized" buyer shut off entire advertising spend as a direct result of a spike in agentic visitors, Justin Wohl, vice president of strategy for Adtitude, confirmed on November 12.

The buyer received a report from Integral Ad Science that raised an invalid traffic alarm on the publisher's site. IVT is a core metric in digital advertising used to flag impressions, clicks, or other activity that doesn't come from genuine audiences. Third-party companies like IAS and DoubleVerify typically detect these on publisher sites so advertisers can determine whether they're spending against human eyeballs.

"IAS has a proven track record in detecting and blocking AI bots – including 'declared' AI agents like those used for RAG purposes, chatbots, and sophisticated scrapers," an IAS spokesperson stated in an email. "We report these as General Invalid Traffic (GIVT), not fraud (or SIVT), so advertisers do not pay for non-human traffic media."

WordPress VIP, the content management system for publishers that also owns analytics platform Parse.ly, can track AI scraping levels across its client base. "We see at least 90% of what's coming from AI scrapers, and it looks like DDoS attacks," Brian Alvey, CTO of WordPress VIP, stated.

The most immediate threat isn't just traffic loss but potential loss of ad revenue. Even while AI crawlers were scraping content, publishers still earned money from ads. If buyers start saying they can't trust traffic because too many agent-like or bot-like visits are mixed in, they may pause spend entirely. "Once that happens, the publisher is totally dead in the water," Wohl added.

Not all publishers are seeing this pattern, but most are on high alert. "I flag it as 'something we all need to investigate,'" Paul Bannister, chief revenue officer of Raptive, stated. "We've done a lot of digging and haven't seen that there is enough traffic like this that it's worth worrying about, but that may be different for different verticals. I think it's more fear right now than reality, but worth watching."

Industry adoption accelerates despite scaling challenges

McKinsey released survey findings on November 9 showing 88% of organizations use AI regularly but only one-third have scaled beyond pilots. The research, conducted between June 25 and July 29, 2025, gathered responses from 1,993 participants across 105 nations.

While 88% of organizations report regular AI use in at least one business function, only one-third have progressed beyond pilot or experimental phases to enterprise-wide scaling. The research identifies significant gaps between adoption rates and financial impact, with only 39% attributing any EBIT impact to AI use.

Agent use is most commonly reported in IT and knowledge management, where use cases such as service-desk management and deep research have quickly developed. By industry, AI agents are most widely reported in technology, media and telecommunications, and healthcare sectors.

McKinsey projects the agentic AI market could reach approximately $1 trillion by 2035-2040. Job postings related to the technology increased 985% from 2023 to 2024. The consulting firm reported that $1.1 billion in equity investment flowed into agentic AI during 2024.

Agencies are competing to hire staff with skills and attitude to implement agent systems. "We need to bring people in who are incredibly fluent and kind of early adopters of AI tools, and who can develop agents," Shannon Moorman, WPP's global head of talent attraction, stated.

At Monks, co-founder and chief AI officer Wesley ter Haar told Digiday the company filled four to five agentic AI roles each in the U.S., U.K., and Netherlands this year. Indie media agencies are hiring for the skill set too. Go Fish Digital hired two "solutions architects" in the past year, David Dweck, general manager, confirmed.

Agent developer roles call for talent who've accumulated experience building and tweaking technology on the fly while coordinating both practical and technical aspects. "We actually need people who understand AI, who are building systems organically within their day to day workflows," Dweck stated. "People who understand taking what took them 40 hours one week and turning it into 38 the next week. They're some of the highest performers, and they just over index towards wanting to learn and being malleable."

Amazon filed federal lawsuit against Perplexity AI on November 4, alleging the startup deployed covert artificial intelligence agents into the e-commerce platform's systems without authorization. The complaint, filed in the Northern District of California, marks the first time Amazon has taken legal action against an AI company over autonomous shopping agents.

The lawsuit centers on Perplexity's Comet browser, which Amazon claims disguises itself as Google Chrome while enabling AI agents to access private customer accounts and make purchases on behalf of users. The complaint alleges Perplexity violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and California's Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act by refusing to transparently identify its agentic activities after repeated requests.

Perplexity's Comet browser threatens Amazon's revenue stream by bypassing the curated shopping experience. The AI agent does not display sponsored products, recommendations, or other advertising elements that generate revenue when human customers browse the marketplace.

Perplexity responded with a blog post on November 4 titled "Bullying is Not Innovation." The company characterized Amazon's legal action as an attempt to "block innovation and make life worse for people." Perplexity argues that Amazon should welcome easier shopping experiences because they increase transactions and customer satisfaction.

The lawsuit highlights fundamental tensions as autonomous agents mediate more consumer interactions. If AI agents handle shopping on behalf of users, traditional advertising models relying on visual impressions and clicks face structural challenges. Amazon's legal response suggests platforms will vigorously defend advertising revenue streams against agent-based disruption.

Industry debate intensifies

Ad tech veteran Ari Paparo published detailed analysis of the Ad Context Protocol on November 3, expressing support for certain automation capabilities while raising significant concerns about media buying applications. The protocol, launched on October 15, aims to establish technical standards for AI agents operating across advertising platforms.

Paparo questioned whether agents can overcome fundamental business problems including pricing transparency resistance, scale economics, and data fragmentation that have historically prevented programmatic direct success. The analysis distinguishes between technical capabilities and business viability in advertising automation.

Industry veteran David Kohl argued that AdCP represents "the tail wagging the dog," warning that protocol-first development creates predictable winners and losers rather than optimal outcomes. The debate reflects broader tension about automation's impact on oversight and accountability in digital advertising.

Multiple platforms announced AI agent capabilities throughout 2025. LiveRamp introduced agentic orchestration capabilities on October 1, enabling autonomous AI agents to access identity resolution, segmentation, and measurement tools. Adobe launched its Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator on September 10 for managing agents across Adobe and third-party ecosystems.

The timing coincides with significant market disruptions. Microsoft announced on May 14 that it would discontinue Microsoft Invest (formerly Xandr) effective February 28, 2026. Kya Sainsbury-Carter, Microsoft Advertising corporate vice president, cited incompatibility between traditional demand-side platform models and the company's vision for "conversational, personalized, and agentic" advertising futures.

Gartner predicted on June 25 that over 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027 due to escalating costs, unclear business value, and inadequate risk controls. The research firm's January 2025 poll of 3,412 webinar attendees revealed uneven investment patterns, with 19% reporting significant investments in agentic systems while 42% made conservative investments.

The marketing community faces fundamental questions about whether existing infrastructure can accommodate autonomous AI systems or whether new protocols are necessary. The debate extends beyond technical specifications to strategic considerations about transparency, trust, and control in automated advertising.

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