Agentic advertising infrastructure is being built across several layers simultaneously. Understanding who is building what helps buyers evaluate which platforms are real and which are positioning. The ecosystem is genuinely distributed: no single company owns all the relevant layers, and the infrastructure that matters is being assembled by different players at different points in the stack.

What counts as agentic advertising infrastructure?

For the purposes of this overview, agentic advertising infrastructure is any system that enables autonomous agents to conduct advertising transactions or supports the governance, audit, and measurement of those transactions. This includes the marketplace layer where deals are negotiated, the standards and protocol layer that defines how agents communicate, and the measurement and audit layer that verifies what was delivered against what was agreed.

It does not include AI-assisted planning tools, automated optimisation within existing DSP or SSP platforms, or AI creative tools. These are adjacent capabilities, but they operate within the existing programmatic structure rather than replacing the deal and negotiation layer.

Who is building the marketplace layer?

Several platforms are building or repositioning toward agent-to-agent deal negotiation. Alkimi is building a purpose-built marketplace where buyer and seller agents negotiate directly, with the DealSheet as the shared deal record. Magnite and PubMatic have both announced agentic initiatives, with PubMatic's AgenticOS positioned as a framework for publishers to expose inventory to buying agents. Index Exchange is similarly investing in infrastructure for agent-accessible supply.

On the buy side, WPP Open represents one of the largest deployments of agent-based buying infrastructure within a holding group context. Newton Research and Olyzon are among the independent platforms building agent-native buying capability. Apostra is also active in this space, focused on the buy-side agent layer.

Who is building the standards and protocol layer?

The protocol layer is where interoperability gets defined. AdCP (Agent Commerce Protocol) is the most prominent standard for agent-to-agent commerce, setting out how agents should structure transactions so that systems built by different platforms can interact. AdCP is developed independently of any single advertising company and represents an attempt to establish a common communication standard for the ecosystem.

The IAB Tech Lab is also active in this area, with working groups examining what existing standards like OpenRTB need to become to accommodate agent-to-agent negotiation. Standards work moves slowly relative to platform development, but the protocol layer matters for long-term interoperability across the industry.

Who is building the measurement and audit layer?

Measurement in agent-to-agent advertising raises questions that do not exist in traditional programmatic: how do you verify that an agent acted within its agreed parameters, and how do you audit a campaign where no human was present at the negotiation stage? Scope3 has positioned itself as a key player in the sustainability and audit layer, providing carbon and quality measurement that can be attached to agentic deal records.

More broadly, the measurement layer is less developed than the marketplace and protocol layers. The tools to independently verify agent-negotiated deals against delivered campaigns are still being built. This is an area where buyers should apply scrutiny when evaluating platform claims.

What is still missing?

The gaps in 2026 agentic advertising infrastructure are mostly in the governance and interoperability layers. Most platforms are building their own agent implementations, and those agents do not yet communicate easily across platforms. The protocol standards work is in progress but has not yet produced the broad adoption that would make cross-platform agent negotiation routine.

Audit tooling is also early. The capability to independently verify an agent-negotiated deal from the outside, without relying on the platform's own reporting, is not yet standardised. This matters most for buyers who are deploying agents at scale and need accountability mechanisms that do not depend on self-reporting.

Alkimi is building the marketplace and deal governance layer: the DealSheet and the approval workflow that sits between buyer agents and seller agents. Other infrastructure layers are being built by different players, and the ecosystem is not winner-takes-all. The platforms, standards bodies, and measurement providers building agentic advertising infrastructure are doing so in parallel, and buyers will increasingly need to evaluate how their chosen platforms connect to each layer.