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IAB Tech Lab has released a roadmap outlining how agentic buying and selling can scale across digital advertising by extending existing industry standards rather than introducing new ones.
The global standards body said the Agentic Roadmap sets out a path to enable secure and interoperable agentic execution without rebuilding the technical foundations of the market.
It will be backed by a dedicated engineering investment focused on AI development.
“Agentic execution is already part of how digital advertising operates today,” CEO of IAB Tech Lab, Anthony Katsur, said.
“Open, interoperable standards are what make that possible, and our focus is on scaling it responsibly. The fastest and smartest way forward is to build on an existing shared foundation, not introduce multiple new standards that create fragmentation.”
The roadmap builds on existing transaction, delivery and measurement standards including OpenRTB, AdCOM, OpenDirect, VAST, the Deal API, Open Measurement ID and the pending Conversion API.
It also incorporates privacy and regulatory frameworks such as the Global Privacy Protocol and the Transparency & Consent Framework.
Tech Lab said it will combine these with modern protocols including Model Context Protocol, Agent2Agent and gRPC to support machine-speed execution and coordination between systems.
The organisation has also pointed to its recently released Agentic RTB Framework, which defines how large language models and autonomous agents can participate in real-time transactions.
“The industry gets the best of both worlds,” Katsur said.
“High-performance agentic execution combined with the interoperability, governance, and trust the market already relies on, without reinventing everything.”
Tech Lab said the approach is intended to reduce integration complexity and operational risk for agencies, publishers, brands and technology providers adopting agentic workflows.
From 2026, the organisation plans to extend standards into an agentic execution layer, including open-source buyer and seller agents, a Model Context Protocol reference server, standardised agent profiles, Protocol Buffers and gRPC mappings, and other agentic tools.
It is also prioritising trust, provenance, measurement and transaction-integrity signals aligned with GPP and TCF.
“Scale only works when interoperability is real,” chief technology officer at Experian Marketing Services, George Panagopoulos, said.
“Agentic advertising only scales when intent, execution, and governance evolve together,” said Nishant Khatri, EVP of product management at PubMatic.
IAB Tech Lab will host a public webinar on January 28, outlining the roadmap and the standards being extended. From February, it will also run monthly in-person Agentic AI boot camps and workshops focused on practical implementation.
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