TL;DR: The Agentic Advertising Marketplace Protocol (AAMP) is an open standard published by IAB Tech Lab that defines how agentic advertising marketplaces should handle deal negotiation, governance, and audit. US buyers evaluating agentic platforms should understand what it specifies and why it matters.

Why a Standard Was Needed

As AI agents began appearing on both the buy side and the sell side of programmatic advertising, a practical problem emerged. Without a shared protocol, every agentic platform would build its own proprietary approach to deal negotiation, deal records, and audit logs. Buyers and publishers would face incompatible systems, proprietary deal formats, and no common basis for comparison or accountability.

The Agentic Advertising Marketplace Protocol (AAMP) was developed to address this. It provides a common framework for how agentic marketplaces should operate, so that buyers, publishers, and infrastructure providers can build to a shared standard rather than a proprietary one.

What AAMP Specifies

AAMP defines the rules for three core areas of agentic marketplace operation.

Deal negotiation. AAMP specifies how deal proposals should be structured, what parameters are required, and how the negotiation process between buy-side and sell-side agents should proceed. It provides the schema for a deal proposal and the protocol for exchange, acceptance, rejection, and counter-proposal.

Deal governance. AAMP defines what a deal record must contain, how it should be stored, and who has custody of it. A deal record under AAMP is bilateral: both the buyer and the publisher hold a copy. The marketplace holds the audit log.

Audit and compliance. AAMP specifies what audit data must be retained, for how long, and in what format. This allows buyers, publishers, and third-party auditors to verify that deals were executed in line with the agreed terms.

What AAMP Does Not Specify

AAMP governs the marketplace layer. It does not define how agents communicate with each other. That is the role of the Agent Communication Protocol (AdCP), which is a separate standard published by AgenticAdvertising.org.

The two standards are complementary. AAMP defines the rules for how the marketplace handles deals. AdCP defines the messaging format agents use to negotiate within that marketplace. Platforms that implement both provide the full infrastructure for structured, auditable agent-to-agent advertising.

AAMP also does not govern ad serving, measurement, audience data, or the buyer's internal campaign management. Those elements remain in the buyer's existing systems. AAMP is specific to the deal negotiation and governance layer.

Why US Buyers Should Care

US programmatic buying is under increasing pressure from advertisers and CMOs to demonstrate supply chain accountability. The ANA's 2023 programmatic transparency study highlighted the scale of unaccountable spend in the US market. AAMP provides a structural framework for addressing this at the deal level.

For US agency trading desks, AAMP compliance in a supply partner means the following can be guaranteed: the deal terms are documented bilaterally, the audit log is available to the buyer, and the deal record is structured to a common standard that any AAMP-compliant reporting tool can read.

For brand-direct programmatic buyers, AAMP compliance means the deals their agents agree are documented in a format that finance teams and compliance functions can audit.

How to Identify AAMP-Compliant Platforms

When evaluating agentic advertising platforms, US buyers should ask directly whether the platform is building to the AAMP standard. A platform that is AAMP-compliant should be able to provide:

- A bilateral deal record for every negotiated deal - An audit log accessible to the buyer independently of the seller - A deal negotiation process structured according to the AAMP schema - Reporting that maps to the AAMP deal record format

Platforms that cannot demonstrate these capabilities are not AAMP-compliant, regardless of how they describe themselves.

Alkimi and AAMP

Alkimi is building its marketplace infrastructure to support the AAMP standard. The DealSheet, Alkimi's bilateral deal record, is designed to meet the deal governance requirements AAMP specifies: bilateral custody, full audit log, and structured deal record format.

For US buyers evaluating Alkimi, this means that deals agreed through the Alkimi marketplace are documented in a format aligned with the emerging industry standard for agentic advertising accountability.