What is AdCP?

The bots are buying and selling the ads!

Wait, I thought we hated "bots."

Yeah, but not these bots. We call these bots: agents.

The ANA says that our average programmatic campaign runs on something like 44,000 websites. I think that number is a bit low in reality, but let's go with it.

That's way, way too many.

Spraying a buy across more sites than you could possibly name is not a strategy.

This issue, among hundreds of others, is what AdCP, or Ad Context Protocol, aims to fix. It was launched last month (October 2025) and intends to formalize how buyer agents, seller agents, and creative agents work together to complete an advertising transaction.

If successful, publishers should earn more revenue per impression because the buying path can be more direct. Advertisers should get access to better inventory with greater transparency at a fair price.

That's the hope, anyway.

ARTF + AdCP: What advertisers need to know

The ad tech world loves a standards war, and for those of us in the tech trenches, the last thing we need is another one. Two AI ads standards were publicly released within a few weeks of each other, but there’s one that should matter slightly more to advertisers.

ADLINGOTravis Lusk

What is AdCP?

The working group's website says that we should think about AdCP as the "USB-C of ad buying."

It is the protocol, language, and methodology for which AI agents talk to eachother to get things done in the ad ecosystem regardless of channel.