IAB Tech Lab's AAMP (Agentic Advertising Management Protocols), announced early 2026, is the open-source umbrella framework for agentic advertising. AdCP, the Ad Context Protocol, is a separate task protocol published and governed by AgenticAdvertising.org. As agentic advertising platforms develop, the question of which protocols they support matters for buyers and publishers evaluating their options. Understanding what AdCP covers, and where it stops, is useful context for anyone assessing agentic deal infrastructure.

What is AdCP?

AdCP is a protocol specification for commerce conducted by autonomous agents. It sets out how agents should structure tasks across a campaign, from inventory discovery and media buys to creative, signals, governance checks and delivery reporting, and it runs over MCP or A2A. The intent is to provide a common foundation so that agents built by different platforms can conduct transactions with each other reliably.

Like AAMP, it is built specifically for advertising, where deals involve structured terms and two parties who each need confidence in what was agreed. How the record of agreement is held is left to the platforms and parties using it.

What does AdCP define for advertising transactions?

For advertising, AdCP provides a structure for tasks across the life of a campaign. It covers how a buying agent can discover inventory and set up a media buy, how creative and signals are handled, and how delivery is reported, in a way that both systems can track.

It addresses how agents structure and exchange these tasks. It does not define the business terms themselves: what constitutes a fair price, acceptable placement, or adequate verification is left to the platforms and parties using the protocol.

Who is building around AdCP?

AdCP is published and governed by AgenticAdvertising.org, separate from any single advertising platform. IAB Tech Lab's AAMP is developed separately as an open-source framework that extends existing standards for agents, and IAB Tech Lab runs an Agent Registry where companies list their agents. Several players in the agentic advertising space are building with awareness of both standards as the field develops. The broader ecosystem includes platforms working on agent-to-agent deal infrastructure, standards bodies setting interoperability requirements, and measurement providers building audit capability around agent-negotiated transactions.

Early adoption tends to follow the larger platforms with the most to gain from interoperability: those that need their agents to transact with agents they do not control. As more buying and selling agents are deployed, the commercial pressure to align with a shared standard increases.

What does open standard support mean for a media deal?

A platform built to an open agentic standard such as IAB Tech Lab's AAMP or AdCP can work with other agents built to the same standard, regardless of which system those agents were built on. For buyers, this means a briefing agent does not need a bespoke API integration with each publisher to transact. For publishers, it means a selling agent can receive and respond to structured requests from any buying agent using the same standard.

In practical terms, support for an open agentic standard is less about a single capability and more about whether the deal workflow, from initial brief to agreed terms, is structured in a way that another system can read and act on without custom translation.

What AdCP does not cover

AdCP is a task protocol that runs across the campaign, including governance checks and delivery reporting. Its documentation says payments, settlement, disputes and makegoods remain account or platform integrations unless a specific AdCP contract covers them. Once a deal is agreed, how settlement is handled and how disputes are resolved therefore usually sits with the platforms and parties involved.

AdCP includes governance checks within its task set, but the policies about when humans must approve and what evidence must be held are still determined by the platforms and organisations using it. The protocol handles the machine-to-machine communication.

Alkimi supports agent-to-agent deal negotiation via shared DealSheets. The platform is designed to operate alongside emerging standards for agent commerce, providing a bilaterally-owned deal record that both buyer and seller hold once terms are agreed.