AAMP and AdCP: What Publishers Need to Know About the Two Agentic Advertising Standards
Two standards efforts now shape how AI agents will buy and sell advertising: AdCP, governed by AgenticAdvertising.org, and AAMP, IAB Tech Lab’s agentic program. Publishers keep asking us which one to pick.
The short answer: they come from different places and are strongest at different jobs. Most publishers will end up touching both, so the goal is a stack that can support both without rewiring.
What is AdCP?
The Ad Context Protocol (AdCP) launched in October 2025. It is now governed by AgenticAdvertising.org (AAO), which launched as an independent industry organisation in December 2025.
- Agent-native. AdCP defines tasks that AI agents call directly, built around the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
- Campaign lifecycle. Its core tasks cover discovering products, creating media buys, syncing creatives and reporting on delivery.
- Open-source sell side. Prebid maintains the open-source, AdCP-based sales agent (now Prebid Sales Agent), which connects to Google Ad Manager.
What is AAMP?
AAMP stands for Agentic Advertising Management Protocols. IAB Tech Lab introduced the name on 26 February 2026 as an umbrella for its agentic work, after CEO Anthony Katsur pointed to confusion in the market about what Tech Lab was building. It has three pillars:
- Agentic Foundations: including the Agentic Real-Time Framework (ARTF), which lets agent services run inside host platforms such as bidders.
- Agentic Protocols: buyer and seller agent SDKs, plus protocol components mapped to existing IAB standards such as OpenDirect and the Deals API.
- Trust and Transparency: an Agent Registry where companies list their agents.
AAMP is moving quickly. AAMP 2.3, released on 30 July 2026, added privacy diligence tools to the buyer agent, stronger pricing guardrails and Google Ad Manager reporting integration. In September, Tech Lab proposed OpenProposal, a standard format for turning an RFP into a purchase, as part of AAMP 3.0. Public comment closed on 22 October 2026.
How they differ
| AdCP | AAMP | |
|---|---|---|
| Steward | AgenticAdvertising.org | IAB Tech Lab |
| Starting point | New, agent-native tasks | Agents layered onto existing IAB standards |
| Strongest at | The full campaign lifecycle | Transactions and auction-side agents (ARTF) |
| Builds on | MCP | OpenRTB, OpenDirect, Deals API, with MCP and A2A as agent interfaces |
Where they overlap
- Direct-sold deals. Both target the slow, manual work of RFPs, proposals and IOs: AdCP through media buys, AAMP through agentic direct and OpenProposal.
- MCP. Both name MCP as an agent interface, so a tool exposed over MCP can, in principle, serve agents on either stack.
- Ad serving. Either way, the deal still ends up running through your ad server and delivering standard ad formats.
As of this writing, the two efforts are not formally coordinated. That may change, but publishers should not wait for it.
What publishers should do now
- Don’t pick a side yet. Buyers will arrive through both. Choose infrastructure that can support AdCP and AAMP rather than betting on one.
- Make your direct-sold catalog agent-readable. Clear products, pricing, targeting and availability are needed by both standards, and they are the work most publishers have not done.
- Keep your auction healthy. OpenRTB and Prebid are not going anywhere. Agents change how deals are found and agreed, not how bids are processed.
- Follow the specs. Watch for the final OpenProposal specification and new AdCP releases on AgenticAdvertising.org.
Disclosure: BidCliq builds header bidding and agentic tools for publishers, and our founder is a founding member of AdCP. The BidCliq Sales Agent has been verified by AgenticAdvertising.org against AdCP 3.1. We aim to support both standards as they mature.
Sources
- PPC Land: IAB Tech Lab names its agentic ad initiative AAMP
- MediaPost: Tech Lab updates agentic protocols, releases AAMP 2.3
- MediaPost: Tech Lab proposes RFP-to-buy process for agentic ads
- Alkimi: What is the AAMP standard?
- VASTlint: AAMP vs AdCP
- AdCP documentation: MCP guide
- AgenticAdvertising.org
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between AAMP and AdCP?
AdCP is an agent-native protocol governed by AgenticAdvertising.org that defines new tasks for the full campaign lifecycle. AAMP is IAB Tech Lab's framework that layers agents onto existing IAB standards such as OpenRTB, OpenDirect and the Deals API.
Who maintains AAMP?
IAB Tech Lab. It introduced the AAMP name on 26 February 2026 as an umbrella for its agentic work, including the Agentic Real-Time Framework (ARTF), buyer and seller agent SDKs and an Agent Registry.
Who maintains AdCP?
AgenticAdvertising.org governs the AdCP specification. Prebid maintains the open-source, AdCP-based sales agent for publishers.
Do publishers need to choose between AAMP and AdCP?
No. Buyers are likely to arrive through both, so publishers are better served by infrastructure that supports both standards.
What is OpenProposal?
OpenProposal is an IAB Tech Lab specification proposed as part of AAMP 3.0. It standardises how sellers present products and respond to RFPs in an agent-readable format. Its public comment period closed on 22 October 2026.
About the author
Founder, BidCliq
Sharad Yadav is the founder of BidCliq, a publisher-first ad monetization platform that helps publishers and ad ops teams run header bidding, Prebid and programmatic across display, video, app and CTV. Before BidCliq, he led AdTech and product at GeeksforGeeks, where he built an in-house ads product that doubled programmatic revenue within nine months and an anti-adblock solution that lifted ad yield by 10%. He is a founding member of AdCP.