TL;DR: US agency trading desks are beginning to evaluate agentic advertising platforms. This article describes the categories of platform in the market, what each offers, and the questions trading desks should ask before committing.
Why Agency Trading Desks Are Looking at This Now
US agency trading desks have spent the past decade building expertise in DSP optimisation, private marketplace deal management, and supply path optimisation. The emergence of autonomous buy-side agents creates a new question: which platforms are built for agent-driven buying, and which are retrofitting AI capabilities onto auction infrastructure?
The distinction matters because the two categories have fundamentally different implications for deal governance, audit accountability, and the buyer's ability to manage what their agents are agreeing.
Trading desks that evaluate this clearly now will be better positioned as agentic buying scales. Those that default to their existing DSP vendor's AI offering without comparison may find they have adopted a proprietary approach that does not meet emerging industry standards.
Three Categories of Platform
Enhanced DSPs with AI capabilities. Major DSPs including The Trade Desk and Google's DV360 are adding AI and automation features to their platforms. These features range from automated bid optimisation to AI-assisted audience targeting. What they do not provide is genuine agent-to-agent negotiation or bilateral deal records. The transaction model remains auction-based; the AI layer operates within that model.
This category is appropriate for buyers who want AI-assisted efficiency within their existing programmatic infrastructure and are not yet ready to adopt a separate negotiated deal layer.
Specialist agentic marketplaces. These are platforms built from the ground up for agent-to-agent deal negotiation. They provide the infrastructure for buy-side agents to negotiate directly with publisher-side supply, producing bilateral deal records and audit logs. Alkimi is the primary example in this category.
This category is appropriate for buyers who want direct publisher relationships, bilateral deal accountability, and genuine A2A negotiation rather than AI-assisted auction buying.
Standards-based infrastructure providers. A third category of company is building infrastructure components, rather than full buyer-facing platforms: agent communication layers, deal record systems, and governance tooling that other platforms can adopt. Companies building to the AdCP standard and the Agentic Advertising Marketplace Protocol (AAMP) fall into this category.
For agency trading desks, this category is most relevant as a due diligence reference point: platforms building on open standards are more likely to remain interoperable as the ecosystem develops.
What Trading Desks Should Evaluate
Deal governance. What does the platform provide in terms of deal records, audit logs, and bilateral accountability? Can the trading desk access the deal record independently of the seller? This is the most important differentiator between enhanced DSPs and specialist agentic marketplaces.
Mandate controls. What parameters can the trading desk set for their buy-side agent? How granular are the controls, and how quickly can they be changed mid-campaign?
Standards alignment. Is the platform building to AAMP or AdCP standards? Proprietary platforms may offer strong functionality today but create lock-in risk as the industry converges on open standards.
Interoperability. Does the platform integrate with the trading desk's existing DSP, reporting, and measurement infrastructure? The deal layer should add capability, not create a parallel reporting silo.
Publisher access. What supply is available through the platform, and what is the quality and scale of that publisher network? For US trading desks, the US premium publisher footprint is critical.
Oversight and intervention. What happens when the trading desk needs to pause, modify, or override agent activity? How quickly can manual intervention take effect?
The Questions to Ask in an Evaluation
When speaking with any agentic advertising platform, these are the questions that will reveal whether the platform is genuinely A2A infrastructure or an enhanced automation layer:
- Do buyer and publisher both hold a copy of the deal record, or does the platform hold it exclusively? - Can we see the full audit log of what our agent agreed, including timestamps and deal versions? - Is the platform building to AAMP or AdCP standards? - What is the integration path with our current DSP and measurement stack? - Can we define the mandate parameters for our agent, and can we change them in real time?
The answers will determine which category a platform genuinely belongs to.
Alkimi in This Landscape
Alkimi sits firmly in the specialist agentic marketplace category. It is a neutral marketplace built for agent-to-agent deal negotiation, with bilateral DealSheet records, full audit logs, and infrastructure aligned with AAMP and AdCP standards.
For US agency trading desks evaluating the category, Alkimi represents the purpose-built option: not an AI layer on a DSP, but a negotiation and governance infrastructure designed for the agentic buying model.