Published: 17 September 2026

TL;DR: AAMP is the IAB Tech Lab's Agentic Advertising Marketplace Protocol, which sets out the governance and operational requirements for marketplaces handling agent-to-agent advertising transactions. A small number of infrastructure providers are building to these requirements. Buyers and publishers evaluating platforms should understand what AAMP requires and what building to it actually means in practice.

The agentic advertising market is developing quickly, and the question of which platforms meet the governance standards set by the IAB Tech Lab is increasingly important. AAMP, the Agentic Advertising Marketplace Protocol, is one of those standards. It defines what a marketplace must provide to operate agentic advertising transactions responsibly.

This piece explains what AAMP requires, which kinds of companies are building to it, and what it means for buyers and publishers making platform decisions.

What AAMP Requires

AAMP sets out the governance requirements for an agentic advertising marketplace. The standard addresses several areas.

The first is agent identity and verification. AAMP requires that marketplaces verify the identity of agents before they can participate in negotiations. An unverified agent is a risk to both sides: buyers need to know that the sell-side agent they are dealing with represents a legitimate publisher, and publishers need the same assurance in reverse. AAMP specifies how identity should be established and maintained.

The second is mandate compliance. AAMP requires that transactions carried out through the marketplace respect the mandates under which agents operate. An agent acting outside its mandate is not a valid counterparty. The marketplace infrastructure must be capable of enforcing mandate boundaries, not just routing messages between agents.

The third is deal record requirements. AAMP requires that agreed terms be recorded in a format that both parties can retrieve independently. A deal record held only by the marketplace does not meet this requirement. AAMP's bilateral record requirement means the marketplace must write the agreed terms to a record accessible to both the buy-side and sell-side independently.

The fourth is neutrality. AAMP requires that the marketplace operate without a commercial interest in deal outcomes. A marketplace that earns revenue based on the value of deals it routes has an incentive to influence deal terms. AAMP's neutrality requirement addresses this conflict.

Who Is Building to AAMP

AAMP compliance is not yet universal. Most conventional programmatic infrastructure was built before the standard existed, and adapting it requires meaningful engineering investment. The companies actively building to AAMP are, broadly, in two categories.

The first category is purpose-built agentic marketplaces. These are platforms built from the ground up to handle agent-to-agent transactions. Because they were not carrying legacy architecture from the conventional programmatic world, they could be designed with AAMP requirements in mind from the start. Alkimi falls into this category. The Alkimi marketplace is built to provide the identity verification, bilateral DealSheet, mandate compliance, and neutral infrastructure that AAMP requires.

The second category is established infrastructure providers adapting their platforms. Some SSPs and exchanges are building AAMP-compliant layers on top of their existing infrastructure. This is a more complex engineering task because it requires retrofitting bilateral deal record capabilities and neutrality requirements onto systems originally designed for unilateral auction dynamics. Progress varies significantly across providers, and buyers evaluating these platforms should ask specific questions about which AAMP requirements have been implemented and which are on the roadmap.

What It Means for Buyers

For buyers evaluating platforms, AAMP compliance provides a consistent reference point. Rather than assessing each platform against a bespoke set of criteria, buyers can ask a single question: does this platform meet AAMP requirements?

The specific questions worth asking are: does the marketplace verify agent identity before negotiation? Does it enforce mandate boundaries? Does it write deal records to a format that both parties can retrieve independently? Is the marketplace's revenue model independent of deal terms?

A platform that answers yes to all four has made the structural commitments AAMP requires. A platform that answers partially has told the buyer where the gaps are.

What It Means for Publishers

For publishers, AAMP compliance on the sell-side means their sell-side agent is operating within a governed structure. The mandate they approve defines the parameters within which the agent can act autonomously. The marketplace they connect to verifies the counterparties they deal with and provides the deal record they need for reconciliation.

Publishers deploying sell-side agents through non-AAMP-compliant infrastructure carry additional operational risk. Without verified counterparties and bilateral deal records, the publisher has less assurance about what was agreed and less evidence to draw on if a dispute arises.

Building to AAMP is a signal that an infrastructure provider is taking the governance of agentic advertising seriously. The standard is not trivial to meet. Platforms that have done the engineering to comply with it have made deliberate choices about identity, neutrality, and deal record integrity. For buyers and publishers assessing the market, that commitment is a meaningful differentiator.