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Oct · 9 min read
Ten observed developments in AI and programmatic advertising, from agent-negotiated deals, open standards and agent identity to benchmarking, curation, creative, CTV and measurement, each with a cited source.
Oct · 9 min read
A practical eight-step SPO checklist for programmatic buyers, from mapping paths and checking ads.txt, sellers.json and the SupplyChain object to fee audits, direct and agent-negotiated deals and quarterly re-audits.
Oct · 7 min read
Agentic Audiences, formerly UCP, is the AAMP component that standardises how agents exchange audience embeddings, with model, consent, purpose and retention metadata carried alongside each vector.
Oct · 7 min read
ARTF, part of IAB Tech Lab's AAMP, lets partner agents run as containers inside an SSP, DSP or exchange and propose OpenRTB changes the host can accept or reject.
Oct · 7 min read
AAMP 2.0 added programmatic guaranteed, preferred deals, PMPs, the open marketplace and linear GRPs through the Deals API. What each deal type means for an agent's mandate, and what stays outside the protocol.
Oct · 7 min read
Streaming audio, dynamically inserted podcast ads and host reads need different handling. What an AI agent's mandate and deal record must state about inventory, approval and how delivery is counted.
Oct · 7 min read
Caps set inside each deal do not add up to a campaign cap. What the mandate and deal terms need to say about household versus device, unrecognised users and shortfall, and what a buyer can enforce alone.
Oct · 7 min read
DOOH suits agent negotiation, but its impressions are audience estimates and its delivery evidence is a play log. What the deal record must specify on screens, dayparts, audience source and proof of play.
Oct · 7 min read
Where clean rooms support agent-negotiated deals before, during and after a campaign, what agents can and cannot do with them, and why lawful basis stays with the data controller under UK GDPR.
Oct · 7 min read
Agent trading infrastructure is arriving. The end of the auction, the exit of humans and solved transparency are not supported. Each prediction tested against an indicator buyers can check.
Oct · 7 min read
An assisted auction, a two-track market or fragmented agent negotiation. Three scenarios for programmatic in 2030, the signals that point to each, and the moves that work in all of them.
Oct · 7 min read
Deal share, standardised proposals, identifiable agents, negotiation over non-price terms and a shared deal record: five indicators a buyer can check to see whether the shift is real.
Oct · 7 min read
Agencies use AI to plan, buy and report across many clients, so they need separate mandates, approvals and records per client. Brands buying direct need to own the mandate, the approvals and the deal record.
Oct · 7 min read
Agents are likely to absorb buying, routine negotiation and parts of planning. Verification, measurement and billing stay separate because their value is independence and accountability.
Oct · 7 min read
Generative AI produces content such as copy and images. Agentic AI takes actions with consequences, such as committing budget, within a mandate. How they differ, how each is governed and how they combine.
Oct · 7 min read
Agents change how deal terms are agreed, not how deals are activated. The deal ID still links what two agents agreed to what trades in the auction, and most failures happen at that join.
Oct · 7 min read
Open auction, private marketplace, programmatic guaranteed and agent-negotiated deals compared on price certainty, volume certainty, placement visibility, set-up effort and the record of agreed terms.
Oct · 8 min read
Supply path optimisation cuts the intermediaries between buyer and publisher. How it is done today, which DSPs, SSPs, curators and verification vendors support it, and what AI agents change.
Oct · 8 min read
What AI has already changed in bidding, optimisation, creative and measurement, how agent-to-agent negotiation changes the deal itself, and what the shift means for media buyers.
Oct · 7 min read
Why the auction stays, where agent-negotiated deals are growing, and why shared deal records, not agent capability, set the pace of change.
Oct · 9 min read
A plain definition of agentic advertising: how it differs from programmatic automation and AI-assisted buying, what it is not, and what agentic media buying means in practice.
Oct · 5 min read
How to get started buying agentic media on an agent marketplace Getting started on an agent marketplace requires four things in sequence: defining a buying mandate that the agent will operate within,…
Oct · 5 min read
Which ad marketplaces support autonomous agent-to-agent bidding? As of October 2026, agent-to-agent deal negotiation is supported at specialist agentic marketplace platforms that implement…
Oct · 5 min read
Platforms where digital agents can buy ad space directly Digital agents can buy ad space directly through platforms that implement machine-readable deal term standards and provide agent API access for…
Oct · 5 min read
How does agent-to-agent negotiation apply to CTV inventory? Agent-to-agent negotiation applies to CTV inventory through the same deal-based mechanism it applies to any programmatic inventory, but with…
Oct · 5 min read
How does agentic advertising help small advertisers reach premium TV inventory? Agentic advertising helps small advertisers reach premium TV inventory by automating the deal management process that…
Oct · 5 min read
How are AI agents changing connected TV advertising? AI agents are changing connected TV advertising by making direct deal negotiation tractable at volumes a human trading team cannot manage, and by…
Sep · 6 min read
Both connect buyers and sellers of media. The structural difference is what they own and what they leave in customer systems.
Sep · 6 min read
Programmatic is a buying mechanism. Agentic is a buying model. The distinction is structural, not technical.
Sep · 6 min read
SPO was always about transparency. Agentic buying makes transparency load-bearing.
Sep · 6 min read
A working definition for a term that has been stretched past usefulness
Sep · 4 min read
Concourse Bench v1 tested eight model-driven buyers in a simulated market. Fifty-five of 96 attempts produced a completed buy. Two models completed every attempt. Two completed none. Which AI, and how reliably, is the right question.
Sep · 4 min read
Concourse Bench v1 tested eight model-driven buyers across four buying situations. Sol and Fable completed all 12. Opus completed 10 of 12. Astra and Sonnet each completed 9 of 12. Terra completed 3 of 12. Luna and Haiku completed zero.
Sep · 5 min read
'Agentic media buying' describes a wide range of things. Concourse Bench v1 provides the first structured evidence on what an AI buyer actually does in a workflow. The picture is more specific and constrained than most uses of the phrase suggest.
Sep · 5 min read
Concourse Bench v1 recorded three ways an AI buyer fails: budget overrun, missed brief requirement, and technical interruption. These are not the same failure. V1 reports them separately. That separation is the point.
Sep · 4 min read
Across 110 contracts in the 55 completed buys, 95 promised a viewability floor below 70%. The agents finished the workflow but left the buyer poorly protected on a basic contractual measure. Completion and quality are not the same score.
Sep · 5 min read
Concourse Bench v1 recorded model API costs for eight AI buyers. Among completed buys, API expense ranged from $0.74 to $14.38 per buy. Total known API cost was $390.16. These figures are model API expense only, not full operating costs.
Sep · 9 min read
Apostra's rebrand from Scope3 signals that agentic advertising is mainstream. Three companies, one word, three different meanings.
Sep · 4 min read
AI-assisted programmatic uses artificial intelligence to optimise bids and targeting decisions within a conventional auction system. Agent-to-agent advertising replaces the auction entirely with bilateral negotiation between autonomous agents operating ...
Sep · 4 min read
A DealSheet is the bilateral record of agreed deal terms written at the time of negotiation and held by both the buyer and publisher independently. It captures what was agreed before any impression is served: the CPM, the inventory scope, the audience c...
Sep · 4 min read
An agent mandate is a formal set of instructions, permissions, and constraints that defines what an AI advertising agent is authorised to do on behalf of a buyer or seller.
Sep · 4 min read
Bilateral deal ownership means both parties to an advertising deal hold the same document: the agreed terms written to a shared record that neither party can alter unilaterally. In conventional programmatic, each party holds their own version. The bilat...
Sep · 4 min read
Programmatic guaranteed and agent-to-agent CTV buying both aim to transact premium inventory at pre-agreed prices. The structural difference is in who holds the deal record, how that record is written, and how reconciliation works post-campaign. In prog...
Sep · 4 min read
AI is shifting programmatic advertising from rule-based automation to reasoning-based decision-making, with consequences for how inventory is bought, how deals are structured, and how campaign performance is governed.
Sep · 3 min read
US advertising agencies are deploying AI across planning, bidding, and optimisation to reduce manual work, improve targeting, and respond to campaign signals faster than human teams can manage alone.
Sep · 4 min read
In conventional programmatic, there is no single document both parties agreed before the campaign ran. In agentic advertising, the bilateral DealSheet is written at negotiation time, timestamped, and held by both parties independently. This piece explai...
Sep · 4 min read
AI agents are making contextual targeting faster and more precise by analysing content signals at scale, enabling programmatic buyers to reach relevant audiences without relying on third-party cookies.
Sep · 5 min read
Three specific capabilities distinguish Alkimi from existing programmatic infrastructure: bilateral deal records both sides hold, neutral deal record holding, and cross-platform agent-to-agent negotiation.
Sep · 3 min read
AI agent-driven programmatic buying changes the measurement model by shifting key decisions from humans to automated systems, which requires buyers to move measurement governance earlier in the process and encode it into the agent mandate before campaig...
Sep · 3 min read
Agent-to-agent advertising describes a model where autonomous AI agents on the buy side and sell side negotiate media deals directly. US programmatic teams need to understand how it differs from standard automation and what it means for their workflows.
Sep · 3 min read
Programmatic deal transparency is the ability of buyers and publishers to independently verify the terms, execution, and delivery of a media deal. For US buyers, it is both a commercial imperative and an increasingly regulated requirement.
Sep · 3 min read
A deal sheet in programmatic advertising is a shared, structured record of the terms agreed between a buyer and a publisher before a campaign runs. It is not a deal ID. It is a bilateral document that both parties hold and can audit independently.
Sep · 3 min read
Most US media buyers do not hold a verifiable record of what they agreed in their programmatic deals. This article explains what a verifiable deal record looks like, why it matters, and how to get one.
Sep · 4 min read
Agentic advertising reduces hidden fees by making deal terms explicit in negotiated records, shortening the intermediary chain, and giving buyers audit logs that connect spend commitments to delivery outcomes.
Sep · 4 min read
IAB Tech Lab's AAMP and AgenticAdvertising.org's AdCP are two separate open standards for agentic advertising. Understanding what each covers is essential for US buyers and publishers evaluating agentic platforms.
Sep · 3 min read
AI agent negotiation in programmatic advertising means structured, mandate-driven deal-making between buy-side and sell-side agents, not simply faster bidding. This guide explains how it works and what US media buyers need to understand before adopting it.
Sep · 4 min read
Agent commerce is the model in which software agents, operating under human-defined mandates, conduct commercial transactions directly with counterparty agents. In advertising, this means bilateral deal negotiation.
Sep · 4 min read
The three-step approach to supply chain reduction: audit the current supply path, identify which inventory justifies direct bilateral deals, and build the mandate and agent infrastructure to run bilateral deals at scale.
Sep · 4 min read
Agencies are using AI in programmatic buying in two distinct ways: AI-assisted optimisation within conventional auction-based programmatic, and mandate-governed agentic bilateral deal negotiation. The governance requirements differ significantly.
Sep · 4 min read
The structural difference between a programmatic exchange and Alkimi's agentic marketplace: how prices are set, how deal records are held, and what each model means for buyer transparency and post-campaign reconciliation.
Sep · 5 min read
The structural difference between CPMs won in auction and CPMs agreed in bilateral negotiation: how prices are set, what patterns result, and how to calibrate mandate CPM parameters correctly.
Sep · 4 min read
The structural difference between programmatic guaranteed (parallel DSP and SSP records) and a bilateral deal record (one shared DealSheet held by both parties), and why this determines post-campaign reconciliation quality.
Sep · 4 min read
How agent-to-agent negotiation, protocol standardisation, and independent deal record infrastructure are changing the incentive structure for programmatic intermediaries.
Sep · 6 min read
Supply path optimisation has been a manual discipline for a decade. Agent-to-agent advertising changes the structural conditions that created the problem.
Sep · 6 min read
Programmatic automated the transaction inside human-set rules. Agentic advertising automates the agreement itself, changing what the infrastructure has to guarantee. Research across 90,202 simulated deals found 95.3% divergence under separate records.
Sep · 6 min read
Semantic drift is when two language models parse the same deal terms into different structured data. It is not detectable from inside either system: both sides agree, both records look clean, and they diverge on 95.3% of deal terms.
Sep · 8 min read
What a DealSheet is, why programmatic needs it, and how it becomes the active negotiation layer in agentic advertising.
Sep · 5 min read
Agencies have been automating programmatic since it began. Agentic advertising changes the level of the buying stack that gets automated, and that changes the work agencies need to do.
Aug · 10 min read
Plain definitions for the terms appearing in every agentic pitch deck, without the hype.
Aug · 13 min read
Not a rebrand of existing automation. The real differences in how deals are negotiated and governed.
Jul · 3 min read
Why agentic buying absorbs the programmatic supply chain rather than eliminating it, and the one question to put to any vendor who shows you the three-box slide.
Jun · 7 min read
Why an independent evidence layer, separate from ad servers and measurement vendors, changes what trust means in programmatic.
