The "are you sure?" button, with a human behind it. The agent does the legwork, then waits for a person to approve the deal, the spend, or the creative. Most brands will start here. Some will stay here for good. The question is where you put the checkpoints, and who gets the 2 a.m. notification.
Ad tech glossary
Human-in-the-Loop (HITL)
Technical definition
An operating model in which a person must review and approve defined AI agent actions before they take effect.
The ADLINGO translation
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Related terms
- A2A (Agent2Agent Protocol)
- AAMP (Agentic Advertising Management Protocols)
- adagents.json
- AdCP (Ad Context Protocol)
- Agent Manifest
- Agentic Advertising
- Agentic Audiences
- Agentic Commerce
- Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)
- Agentic Marketplace
- AgenticAdvertising.org
- Answer-Based Ads
Where this shows up
AI: What we owe the team
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.
The skills that survive
You cannot automate a decade of being trustworthy. You can't prompt your way to someone wanting to work with you for the next year.
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.