Artificial intelligence is already embedded across the digital advertising ecosystem, but the next phase of evolution is moving beyond optimization tools and into agentic systems. These are autonomous software agents that can plan, negotiate, and execute advertising tasks on behalf of buyers and sellers.
To help the industry prepare for this shift, IAB Tech Lab has released its Agentic Roadmap. It outlines how existing digital advertising standards can support agent-based workflows without fragmenting the ecosystem or introducing unnecessary complexity.
Rather than proposing a clean break from today’s infrastructure, the roadmap focuses on extending what already works.
Building on Existing Standards, Not Replacing Them
Agentic advertising should scale through interoperability, not proprietary solutions.
The roadmap outlines how widely adopted standards, including OpenRTB, AdCOM, OpenDirect, VAST, and the recently introduced Deals API, can be used as the transactional and semantic foundation for agent-based buying and selling. These standards already define how media is described, priced, measured, and transacted. Agentic systems can build on this shared language to automate decision-making while remaining compatible with today’s programmatic workflows.
To support this, the roadmap also references modern communication protocols such as Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent2Agent (A2A), and gRPC. These enable agents to securely exchange instructions, context, and outcomes across platforms.
The intent is to avoid a future where every AI-driven solution introduces its own integration requirements.
What “Agentic” Looks Like in Practice
Agentic systems differ from traditional automation in that they can operate with greater autonomy. In an advertising context, this could include agents that:
- Evaluate campaign objectives and available inventory
- Negotiate deal terms within predefined constraints
- Execute buys, optimize delivery, and adapt to performance signals
- Report outcomes using standardized measurement frameworks
The roadmap emphasizes that these capabilities should operate within existing governance, privacy, and measurement structures. Frameworks such as the Global Privacy Platform, Transparency and Consent Framework, and Open Measurement remain central to how agentic systems are expected to function responsibly.
Why This Matters for the Canadian Market
For Canadian advertisers, publishers, agencies, and technology providers, the Agentic Roadmap provides early clarity on how AI-driven execution may evolve globally and how Canadian organizations can align with those changes without reinventing their stacks.
By anchoring agentic workflows to open standards, the roadmap helps ensure:
- Cross-border compatibility with global partners and platforms
- Reduced integration overhead for Canadian companies adopting agent-based tools
- Continued alignment with privacy and regulatory expectations
“As AI continues to reshape how advertising is planned and transacted, it is critical that the industry evolves together,” said Sonia Carreno, President of IAB Canada. “The IAB Tech Lab’s Agentic Roadmap reinforces the importance of open, interoperable standards so Canadian advertisers, publishers, and technology partners can adopt agentic capabilities with confidence and remain aligned with existing, rigorously tested and proven global best practices.”
As agentic capabilities mature, organizations that already rely on IAB Tech Lab standards will be better positioned to adopt these tools incrementally rather than through disruptive overhauls.
Learn More and Participate
IAB Tech Lab will host a public webinar, Launching the Agentic AI Roadmap, to provide an overview of the roadmap and explain how agentic standards align with existing frameworks across the digital advertising ecosystem. The session will also outline opportunities for industry engagement and participation.
Canadian industry stakeholders are encouraged to attend to better understand how agentic systems may shape future buying and selling workflows and how open standards can support responsible adoption.