Between October 2025 and October 2026, Amazon Ads, Google, The Trade Desk, Yahoo DSP, PubMatic and Magnite all announced AI agents for advertising, while IAB Tech Lab and AgenticAdvertising.org released the standards those agents use to work with each other. The timeline below lists each launch and standards milestone by date, with a link to the source.

TL;DR: The launches fall into two groups: assistants that work inside one platform, and agents built to deal with other companies' agents. Standards releases appear as separate entries, because IAB Tech Lab's AAMP and AgenticAdvertising.org's AdCP each shipped several versions in the same period. Inclusion is not a ranking, and nothing here assesses whether any product works as described.

How was this timeline built?

Each entry has a date, a company, a plain description of what was announced and a link to the company's own announcement or to trade press. Anything that could not be dated and sourced was left out, and the order is chronological, not a ranking.

A worked example shows why platform launches and standards releases belong on the same page. Alkimi, an enterprise platform for agentic advertising, runs a neutral marketplace that works within IAB Tech Lab's AAMP framework today and is being built to be AdCP compatible. Any buyer or seller agent trading there depends on both kinds of milestone at once: the agent a platform launches, and the protocol that agent speaks.

What launched before October 2025?

13 March 2025: Scope3. Scope3 used its first Landscape conference in New York to launch what it called an "agentic advertising platform", Digiday reported.

What launched between October and December 2025?

15 October 2025: AdCP launches (standard). More than 20 companies, including PubMatic, Scope3, Magnite, Triton Digital, Kargo and Yahoo, signed on to the Ad Context Protocol, an open protocol for how AI agents in advertising communicate, according to Adweek. The code went live on GitHub the same day, and AdCP is now published by AgenticAdvertising.org.

16 October 2025: first agent-to-agent media buy. AgenticAdvertising.org records this as the first agent-to-agent media buy, with real money, inventory from LG Ads and AI agents handling creative, targeting and approval under human oversight. "It felt like you were watching the first banner ad being served," said Adam Broitman, Partner at McKinsey & Company, quoted on the same page.

3 November 2025: LiveRamp and IAB Tech Lab (standard). LiveRamp donated the User Context Protocol to IAB Tech Lab, where it is now called Agentic Audiences. The standard defines how agents exchange identity, contextual and reinforcement signals, using embeddings rather than raw data points.

11 November 2025: Amazon Ads. At unBoxed 2025, Amazon Ads announced Ads Agent, an AI agent that helps advertisers plan, launch and optimise campaigns in Amazon Marketing Cloud and Amazon DSP. The announcement states that campaigns only launch after the advertiser reviews and approves them.

12 November 2025: Google. Google announced two agents, Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor, built on its Gemini models for Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts. Ads Advisor can suggest changes and, with the advertiser's review and approval, apply them to the account.

13 November 2025: ARTF (standard). IAB Tech Lab released the Agentic Real Time Framework v1.0 for public comment, a containerised approach that lets agents and other real-time systems operate in the same environment. Digiday listed Index Exchange, Amazon Ads, Yahoo DSP, Netflix, Paramount and WPP among the companies that shaped it.

What launched between January and March 2026?

5 January 2026: PubMatic. PubMatic launched AgenticOS, an operating system for orchestrating agent-to-agent advertising execution, with WPP Media, Butler/Till and MiQ among its launch partners. The release also describes an earlier campaign run in December 2025 with Butler/Till.

6 January 2026: Yahoo DSP. At CES, Yahoo DSP built agentic AI into its platform under a framework it calls "Yours, Mine, and Ours". Advertisers can bring their own AI models, use Yahoo DSP's native agents or connect both through Model Context Protocol or APIs.

6 January 2026: IAB Tech Lab agentic roadmap (standard). IAB Tech Lab published its agentic roadmap, extending established standards such as OpenRTB, AdCOM and OpenDirect with Model Context Protocol, Agent2Agent and gRPC. "The fastest and smartest way forward is to build on an existing shared foundation, not introduce multiple new standards that create fragmentation," said Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab.

26 February 2026: AAMP named (standard). IAB Tech Lab brought its agentic work under one name, the Agentic Advertising Management Protocols (AAMP), unveiled that week at the Beet.TV Beet Retreat. ARTF, Agentic Audiences and the Buyer and Seller Agent SDKs all sit under the AAMP umbrella.

What launched between April and June 2026?

21 April 2026: AdCP 3.0 (standard). AgenticAdvertising.org published AdCP 3.0, extending the protocol from media buying and signals to the whole advertising lifecycle.

23 April 2026: AAMP 2.0 (standard). IAB Tech Lab released AAMP 2.0, turning its reference implementations into Buyer and Seller Agent SDKs that can negotiate with each other or share an agreed rate card. Every action is logged and audited so that humans can stay in the loop for approvals.

27 April 2026: Magnite. Magnite announced a new buyer agent, with Kepler and MiQ testing it on inventory from Disney Advertising,. Magnite also said it is working with Publicis Media Exchange as part of bringing seller agent workflows to market.

20 May 2026: Google. Google introduced Ask Advisor, a cross-product agent in beta that connects data across Google Ads, Google Analytics and Merchant Center to offer recommendations.

9 June 2026: Boostr and Vox Media. Boostr and Vox Media announced an agentic media buy using AdCP, in which Vox Media, using Boostr's seller agent, received, negotiated and completed the purchase. Vox Media then accepted the buy and verified it in its ad server before the campaign launched.

11 June 2026: Magnite. Magnite launched Magnite Orchestration, a coordination layer that lets buyers connect their own buyer agents to Magnite's seller agent. Partners named as testing the expanded agent capabilities include dentsu and DIRECTV Advertising.

18 June 2026: Yahoo DSP. Yahoo DSP launched the Agent Network, an open framework that connects its advertisers to AI agents built by technology partners.

What launched between July and September 2026?

30 July 2026: AAMP 2.3 (standard). IAB Tech Lab released AAMP 2.3, adding deployment through Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, buying across further platforms including Meta and integration with Google Ad Manager reporting.

21 August 2026: The Trade Desk. The Trade Desk opened a closed beta of Koa Agents inside Kokai, with four agents covering help and search, campaign creation, insights and troubleshooting. Six days later it introduced Kokai Zuma, a release that brings together new agentic AI capabilities and a simpler measurement framework.

22 September 2026: AAMP 3.0 and OpenProposal (standard). IAB Tech Lab announced AAMP 3.0 with OpenProposal, a specification for how sellers describe advertising products and answer buyer briefs in a format agents can read. It covers the stage between an RFP and a buy commitment.

29 September 2026: Amazon Ads. At unBoxed 2026, Amazon Ads announced Amazon Ads Agent as the new name for its unified platform, now powered by agentic AI and covering sponsored ads, Display, Video and Audio, and Full-Funnel Campaigns.

What happened in October 2026?

22 October 2026: OpenProposal comment period closes (standard). The public comment period for OpenProposal in AAMP 3.0 closed on this date. IAB Tech Lab said the specification would be built into its Buyer and Seller Agent SDK reference implementations during the comment period.

What patterns does the timeline show?

Almost every launch keeps a person in the approval step. Amazon Ads, Google and The Trade Desk each describe review and approval before changes go live, and the Boostr and Vox Media buy ended with the publisher accepting and verifying the deal.

On the earned autonomy scale (Observe, Recommend, Draft, Human-approved action, Bounded automatic action), most of these announcements describe agents at the Recommend, Draft or Human-approved action stages.

The second shift is from assistants inside one platform towards agents that deal with agents at other companies. PubMatic's AgenticOS, Magnite Orchestration, Yahoo DSP's Agent Network and the Boostr and Vox Media buy all cross company lines, which is where shared standards matter.

Standards moved at the same pace as products. IAB Tech Lab shipped ARTF, its agentic roadmap and the AAMP 2.0, 2.3 and 3.0 releases within a year, and AgenticAdvertising.org took AdCP from launch to version 3.0 in six months.

Frequently asked questions

Which advertising platforms are using AI agents?

Amazon Ads, Google, The Trade Desk, Yahoo DSP, PubMatic and Magnite all announced AI agents between November 2025 and September 2026, each linked above. Earlier, Scope3 launched an agentic advertising platform in March 2025, and in June 2026 Boostr and Vox Media announced an agentic media buy using AdCP.

What is the difference between AAMP and AdCP?

AAMP is IAB Tech Lab's Agentic Advertising Management Protocols, an umbrella for its agentic standards that builds on OpenRTB, AdCOM, OpenDirect and the Deals API. AdCP is the Ad Context Protocol, an open protocol published by AgenticAdvertising.org for how advertising agents communicate across the campaign lifecycle.

When was the first agent-to-agent media buy?

AgenticAdvertising.org records the first agent-to-agent media buy on 16 October 2025, using inventory from LG Ads. MediaPost covered it the same day.

Do these AI agents buy media without human approval?

Most launches in this timeline describe a human review or approval step before campaigns go live or changes are applied. PubMatic says its December 2025 campaign executed the buy within predefined parameters, and that was described as an early campaign.

What is OpenProposal?

OpenProposal is a specification in IAB Tech Lab's AAMP 3.0 that standardises how sellers describe advertising products and respond to buyer briefs in a format agents can read. Its public comment period ran from 22 September to 22 October 2026.

What should buyers and sellers watch next?

After a year of launches, the open question is less which platforms have agents and more how agents from different companies agree terms, transact and keep a record both sides can check.

Alkimi took part in the OpenProposal v3.0 public comment period, which closed on 22 October 2026. Its three products sit in this gap: Concourse benchmarks AI media-buying agents, the Gym lets buyers and sellers build agents and spar against counterparty agents before any real money moves, and the Marketplace keeps humans' approval rights at the deal level, with a DealSheet held by both parties. In Concourse Bench v1, 55 of 96 runs completed a buy, which is why completion, and not only capability, is worth tracking as this timeline grows.

Which Ad Platforms Have Launched AI Agents? A Sourced 2026 Timeline