AdCP vs. IAB Tech Lab: Inside programmatic advertising’s agentic AI standards showdown

Programmatic advertising is going through yet another period of transformation. This time from the era of web-based automation to the era of agentic AI-powered automation. Except there seem to be two competing philosophies for how AI agents and programmatic advertising should intersect.

On one side, there’s the Ad Context Protocol, which aims to create new standards native to AI agents. On the other, there’s IAB Tech Lab, which looks to augment and adapt its existing standards for AI agents through its Agentic Roadmap.

What’s been unclear is to what extent the two frameworks are compatible or competitive. In this video, programmatic experts — including executives from IAB Tech Lab and AdCP’s founding companies — weighed in on that at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm Springs, California.

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‘Being very careful’: Weeks after unveiling ad plans, OpenAI works to control the message

Three days before the first ads were set to appear inside ChatGPT, the marketers testing them received a brief update: the launch date had shifted from Feb. 6 to Feb. 9. No explanation came with it – just a scheduling change from a company still working out how openly it wants to talk about becoming an ads business. 

The timing raised eyebrows. 

The same day OpenAI notified marketers about that shift, rival Anthropic began running a brand marketing campaign during its Super Bowl slot, taking aim at the idea of chatbots selling ad space — an unsubtle critique. For some marketers, OpenAI’s delay looked less like a technical adjustment and more like optics management: let the noise pass, then proceed. 

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