Agentic advertising is advertising in which AI agents buy, sell and negotiate media on behalf of advertisers and publishers, within a mandate a person has set. The person decides the objective, the limits and which commitments need sign-off, and the agent decides how to meet them and keeps a record of what it agreed.

TL;DR. This glossary defines 40 terms that buyers, publishers and ad tech teams meet in agentic advertising, grouped into four themes: agents and autonomy, standards and protocols, deals and records, and the supply chain. Terms are alphabetical within each theme, and each definition stands on its own. Definitions of standards follow their publishers' wording, with a link to the source.

What does agentic advertising mean in practice?

Most of the vocabulary below describes one sequence. A person writes a mandate, a buyer agent negotiates with a seller agent, a human approves any commitment above the approval threshold, and both sides keep a record of the agreed terms. In a marketplace such as Alkimi, that record is a DealSheet: written at agreement, timestamped, held by both parties and retrievable by either side independently.

What are the key terms for agents and autonomy?

Agent commerce. Buying and selling in which software agents act for a business or person, finding counterparties, agreeing terms and completing transactions without a human handling each step.

Agentic advertising. The use of AI agents to buy, sell and negotiate media within a human-set mandate. Unlike programmatic automation, which executes rules a person wrote in advance, the agent chooses its own actions.

AI agent. Software driven by an AI model that pursues a goal by deciding on actions, taking them, observing the result and adjusting. An assistant recommends; an agent acts.

Approval threshold. The value, volume or deal type above which an agent must hand a decision to a named person before committing.

Benchmark. A controlled, repeatable test that runs different agents through the same briefs and scores the outcomes, ideally including the terms secured, not only whether the buy completed.

Bounded automatic action. The final stage of earned autonomy, in which an agent commits without approval for each deal, but only inside explicit limits.

Buyer agent. An agent acting for an advertiser or agency that reads a brief, finds inventory, negotiates and books deals within its mandate. IAB Tech Lab publishes an open-source reference buyer agent within AAMP.

Counterparty agent. The agent on the other side of a negotiation: the seller agent for a buyer, or the buyer agent for a seller.

Earned autonomy. A model in which an agent's authority grows in five stages: observe, recommend, draft, human-approved action and bounded automatic action. Each step up needs evidence and a person's authorisation.

Human-in-the-loop. An arrangement in which a person must approve defined agent actions before they take effect. IAB Tech Lab's AAMP 2.0 release describes human-in-the-loop approval gates in its agent SDKs.

Mandate. The written instruction that defines what an agent may do: budget, price ceilings, inventory, audiences, brand safety rules and the thresholds that need human sign-off.

Seller agent. An agent acting for a publisher or media owner that presents and prices inventory, answers buyer requests and books deals within the seller's rules. IAB Tech Lab publishes a reference seller agent.

Sparring. Practice negotiation between agents on realistic briefs before any real money moves, which shows where an agent concedes too much, stalls or breaks its mandate.

Which standards and protocols should teams know?

AAMP (Agentic Advertising Management Protocols). IAB Tech Lab's umbrella initiative for agentic advertising, an open-source framework announced in early 2026. Its separately versioned components build on existing standards such as OpenDirect, the Deals API and OpenRTB.

AdCP (Ad Context Protocol). An open protocol published by AgenticAdvertising.org that lets AI agents discover, plan, buy, sell and measure media across channels. Version 3.2 is generally available, and agents expose its tasks over MCP or A2A.

Agent2Agent (A2A). An open protocol for communication between AI agents built on different frameworks by different vendors. Agents reach tools through MCP and other agents through A2A.

Agentic Audiences. An open standard, formerly the User Context Protocol and donated to IAB Tech Lab by LiveRamp, for how agents exchange identity, contextual and reinforcement signals as privacy-preserving embeddings.

agentic-direct. The AAMP component that provides the core communication framework and orchestration layer for agent interaction. Its repository implements A2A with MCP integration for OpenDirect v2.1.

Agentic Real Time Framework (ARTF). An IAB Tech Lab specification for agent services that run inside a host platform as containers the host calls directly, for uses such as deal activation or pre-impression fraud detection.

Deals API. An IAB Tech Lab specification, finalised as version 1.0 on 6 February 2026, that pushes a deal's terms from the system that created it to the one that delivers it, for example from an SSP to a DSP. Negotiation is listed as a possible future addition.

IAB Tech Lab Agent Registry. A directory in the IAB Tech Lab Tools Portal where companies list their MCP and A2A agents with categories and capabilities. The registry is itself an MCP server, so agents can query it.

Idempotency. The property that sending the same request twice has the same effect as sending it once, so a retried booking cannot create a duplicate deal. AdCP requires an idempotency key on mutating tasks.

MCP (Model Context Protocol). An open-source standard for connecting AI applications to external systems such as data sources, tools and workflows.

OpenProposal. The core object of AAMP 3.0: a draft specification of what is being bought and sold, built so a buying agent can parse and evaluate it at machine speed. Its public comment period runs from 22 September to 22 October 2026.

OpenRTB. IAB Tech Lab's API specification for real-time bidding, in which individual impressions are offered for bid in an automated auction. Version 2.6 carries deal terms in its Pmp and Deal objects.

Request signing. Cryptographically signing a request so the receiver can verify the sender and confirm nothing was altered. AdCP uses HTTP Message Signatures (RFC 9421), which its documentation makes optional through 3.2 and mandatory in 4.0 for spend-committing operations.

Which terms describe deals and deal records?

Agentic marketplace. A venue where buyer and seller agents find each other, negotiate and transact, with agent identity checks, approval gates and a deal record both parties can rely on.

Bilateral deal record. A record of agreed deal terms that buyer and seller both hold and can each read independently, so any dispute starts from the same facts.

Deal ID. The unique identifier for a deal between a buyer and a seller, carried in the bid request so the buyer's platform can apply the deal's terms. In OpenRTB 2.6 it is the one required field of the Deal object.

DealSheet. The deal record in the worked example above: written at agreement, timestamped, held by both parties and retrievable by either side independently. Neither AAMP nor AdCP defines it; this explainer covers it in full.

Make-good. Compensation, typically extra inventory, that a seller provides when delivery falls short of agreed terms. With an agent-negotiated deal, a make-good claim is only as clear as the record of what was promised.

Preferred deal. A deal giving a buyer access to inventory at a fixed price agreed in advance, without a guaranteed volume, so the buyer can bid or pass.

Private marketplace (PMP). An invitation-only auction in which a publisher offers inventory to selected buyers, usually above a floor price.

Programmatic guaranteed (PG). A deal in which the buyer commits to a fixed volume of impressions at a fixed price, delivered programmatically. OpenRTB 2.6 flags it as guaranteed, meaning the bidder must bid.

Reconciliation. Matching each party's records against what was agreed and delivered before invoices settle. In the Agree. Transact. Verify. simulation, records disagreed on at least one deal term in 95.3% of simulated deals when each side kept its own, against 0.19% with a shared record.

Which supply chain terms still apply to agentic buying?

ads.txt. Authorized Digital Sellers: a public file on a publisher's domain listing the companies authorised to sell its inventory. IAB Tech Lab released version 1.0 in June 2017.

Curation. Packaging inventory, often from several publishers and with data applied, into a deal a buyer can activate. The Deals API is designed to show which parties curated and sold a package.

sellers.json. A file published by an advertising system that lets buyers identify the direct sellers and intermediaries behind an impression. IAB Tech Lab finalised it on 31 July 2019.

Supply path optimisation (SPO). The buy-side practice of choosing the most direct, transparent routes to inventory and dropping routes that add cost without adding value.

SupplyChain object. An OpenRTB object listing every party selling or reselling a bid request, as a chain of nodes whose identifiers should match ads.txt and sellers.json.

Which products put these terms to work?

Alkimi is an enterprise platform for agentic advertising with three products. Concourse is a live benchmarking product for AI media-buying agents, and the Gym, available now, lets buyers and sellers build their own agents, set the rules they work to and spar against counterparty agents before any real money moves.

The Marketplace is neutral: it works within IAB Tech Lab's AAMP framework today, uses AAMP identity checks and is being built to be AdCP compatible. Humans keep approval rights at the deal level, and the DealSheet is part of the Marketplace. The company is also taking part in the OpenProposal v3.0 public comment period.

Frequently asked questions

How does agentic advertising differ from programmatic advertising?

Programmatic advertising executes rules a person wrote in advance at machine speed. Agentic advertising hands bounded decisions, including negotiating terms, to an agent working within a mandate.

Are AAMP and AdCP the same thing?

No: AAMP is IAB Tech Lab's umbrella of agentic advertising protocols, and AdCP is a separate open protocol published by AgenticAdvertising.org. Each has its own publisher, governance and documentation.

Does a human still approve agent-negotiated deals?

In a governed setup, yes: anything above the mandate's approval thresholds goes to a named person. How much an agent may do alone should depend on its stage of earned autonomy.

Do ads.txt and sellers.json still matter when agents buy media?

Yes. Agents still need to know who is authorised to sell inventory and who sits in the supply path.

Agentic Advertising Glossary: 40 Terms Explained