According to Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab, agentic execution is not a future concept; it’s already happening in digital advertising today. The challenge, he said, is to scale responsibly without fragmenting the ecosystem. The roadmap relies on open, shared standards as a foundation, with the aim of avoiding the confusion and inefficiencies associated with the introduction of multiple competing frameworks.
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The core of the roadmap consists of established standards that the industry already relies on, including OpenRTB, AdCOM, OpenDirect, VAST and the Deal API, along with measurement and privacy frameworks such as Open Measurement, the Conversion API, GPP and TCF. These are combined with newer protocols such as Model Context Protocol, Agent2Agent and gRPC to support machine-speed execution and coordination between independent systems, while maintaining governance and trust.
Looking ahead to 2026, IAB Tech Lab plans to roll out open-source reference implementations for buyer and seller agents, standardized agent profiles, and additional tools to support agent workflows in production. The organization will also host a public webinar on January 28, 2026followed by a series of in-person Agentic AI bootcamps starting in February. The goal is to help agencies, publishers, brands and technology providers implement agentic execution faster, with less risk and without rebuilding the digital advertising stack from scratch.
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