A common language so your buying agent and a publisher's selling agent can actually talk. Today every platform has its own API, its own quirks, and its own sales team. AdCP lets an agent ask "what do you have for this brief?" and get an answer it understands, from display to CTV to podcasts. Think of it as OpenRTB for the negotiation stage.
Ad tech glossary
AdCP (Ad Context Protocol)
Technical definition
An open standard, stewarded by AgenticAdvertising.org, that gives AI agents a shared language to discover, plan, buy and manage advertising across channels. It runs over MCP and A2A.
The ADLINGO translation
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Related terms
- A2A (Agent2Agent Protocol)
- AAMP (Agentic Advertising Management Protocols)
- adagents.json
- Agent Manifest
- Agentic Advertising
- Agentic Audiences
- Agentic Commerce
- Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)
- Agentic Marketplace
- AgenticAdvertising.org
- Answer-Based Ads
- Approval Threshold
Where this shows up
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I'm clocking two kinds of advertising executives right now: Ones who treat AI like a procurement decision, and the ones treating it like a leadership test. One buys tools. The other builds teams that know how to use them.
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The RFP Oracle
The ad tech sales season is wrapping up for 2026. AI dominated everything the market responded to this year, and it was the most predictable trend ever. All we had to do was pay attention to what the agencies were asking.