TL;DR: AAMP and AdCP are two separate open standards for agentic advertising, published by IAB Tech Lab and AgenticAdvertising.org respectively. Understanding what each covers is essential for US buyers and publishers evaluating agentic platforms.

Two Standards, Two Publishers

The rise of autonomous agents in advertising has produced two distinct open standards. They are frequently mentioned together and sometimes confused. They are separate specifications from separate organisations.

The Agentic Advertising Management Protocols (AAMP) is IAB Tech Lab's open-source umbrella framework for agentic advertising, announced early 2026. It extends existing standards for agents rather than replacing them. Its components include agentic-direct for agent communication and orchestration, reference buyer and seller agents, OpenProposal for how publishers define products and packages and present them in RFP responses, registry-agent-example for agent discovery, the Agentic RTB Framework, and agentic-audiences. Per IAB Tech Lab, its Deals API support covers programmatic guaranteed, preferred deals, PMPs, open marketplace and linear GRPs.

The Ad Context Protocol (AdCP) is published and governed by AgenticAdvertising.org, at version 3.2 as of October 2026. It is a task protocol across the campaign, covering inventory discovery, media buys, creative, signals, governance checks and delivery reporting, over MCP or A2A.

Both cover how agents communicate, so the useful distinction is not rulebook versus language. It is who publishes each standard, and which components or tasks a given platform actually supports.

Why Both Standards Exist

Both standards respond to the same underlying problem.

Before AAMP, there was no common IAB Tech Lab framework for agentic advertising. Every platform that claimed to support A2A advertising had its own approach to how agents communicated, discovered each other, and packaged inventory. Buyers and publishers had no common basis for comparing them. AAMP extends existing standards for agents rather than replacing them.

AdCP takes a different route: a single task protocol that runs from inventory discovery through to delivery reporting. Its documentation says payments, settlement, disputes and makegoods remain account or platform integrations unless a specific AdCP contract covers them.

Both aim to reduce the fragmentation that made cross-vendor A2A deals impractical.

How a Standards-Based Transaction Works

In a standards-based A2A transaction, the process typically works as follows.

The buy-side agent sends a deal proposal to the marketplace, structured to an open agentic standard such as IAB Tech Lab's AAMP or AdCP, in a format the sell-side agent can parse and respond to.

The marketplace routes the proposal to the sell-side agent. The sell-side agent evaluates the proposal against the publisher's parameters and responds using the same standard.

When both agents agree, the marketplace records the agreed terms. Neither AAMP nor AdCP defines that record. On Alkimi it is the DealSheet, Alkimi's own deal record, held by both the buyer and the publisher, with humans keeping approval rights at the deal level.

The buyer's DSP or campaign management system then receives the deal parameters and executes the campaign against the agreed terms.

What This Means for US Buyers

For US buyers, standards support in an agentic platform means two things.

First, the deals their agents agree are documented and auditable. The deal record is held by both parties in a format that third-party auditors, finance teams, and compliance functions can read.

Second, the platform is interoperable with the rest of the ecosystem. A platform building to open standards such as AAMP and AdCP is not building a proprietary walled garden. Buyers who adopt a standards-based platform are not locked into a vendor-specific deal format.

For US agency trading desks managing relationships with multiple supply partners, standards compliance is the difference between a scalable infrastructure decision and a proprietary commitment.

What This Means for US Publishers

For US publishers, a marketplace partner built to open standards such as AAMP means their sell-side agent is using communication protocols that buy-side agents from different vendors can interpret. Bilateral deal records and audit rights depend on the marketplace's own design, so publishers should check those separately.

A publisher who connects to a marketplace that supports open agentic standards can receive deal proposals from buy-side agents built to those standards, regardless of which platform each agent runs on. This is the interoperability benefit of open standards.

Where Alkimi Fits

Alkimi is building its marketplace to support both AAMP and AdCP. The DealSheet implements bilateral deal custody in line with AAMP governance requirements. The agent communication layer is built on AdCP, so buy-side agents using AdCP-compatible platforms can negotiate directly with publisher supply available through Alkimi.

For US buyers and publishers, this means Alkimi is not asking them to adopt a proprietary standard. It is implementing the standards the industry is converging on.