# IAB Agentic Standards

> What IAB Tech Lab's AAMP covers: ARTF containers, Agentic Audiences embeddings, Agent Registry — 2026 status of each, validated against official specs.

- Canonical: https://nofluffadvisory.com/standards/iab-agentic-standards/
- Published: 2026-06-07
- Standards last validated: 2026-09-08

---

*Standards & Protocols*

Validated September 2026 · Registry live · ARTF v1.0 final · Agentic Audiences v0.1 drafts

A practical guide to AAMP, ARTF, Agentic Audiences, Agent Registry, and the IAB Tech Lab roadmap for agentic advertising.

IAB Tech Lab's agentic work is not a single spec. It is an umbrella initiative for bringing agentic execution into the advertising ecosystem through foundations, protocols, and trust infrastructure built on existing industry standards.

*Figure: AAMP umbrella over three pillars — foundations, protocols, trust — built on existing IAB Tech Lab standards.*

Agentic advertising needs more than agents. It needs standards for execution, signal exchange, identity, governance, transparency, and audit.

**Standard readiness (validate before build)**

- **AAMP** — 2.3 (buyer/seller agent tags Jul 22-29, 2026 · umbrella repo: no releases) [status: ga]
- **ARTF v1.0** — final · Aug 2026 [status: ga]
- **Agentic Audiences** — v0.1 drafts · no tagged release [status: planned]
- **Agent Registry** — live · Mar 2026 [status: live]
- **Agentic Bid / Mobile** — Q2 target passed · Mobile v1.0.0-draft [status: planned]

## Fast read

- **What it is:** AAMP is IAB Tech Lab's umbrella initiative for agentic advertising standards.
- **Core pieces:** ARTF for containerized real-time execution, Agentic Audiences for signal exchange, Agent Registry for transparency, and agentic versions of existing standards.
- **What it is not:** Not a single replacement for OpenRTB, AdCOM, OpenDirect, or Deals API.
- **Why it matters:** Agentic advertising must extend proven transaction standards instead of creating disconnected automation layers.
- **Best for:** Adtech, publishers, platforms, agencies, measurement companies, data vendors, and product teams building agentic advertising infrastructure.
- **Watch-out:** The standards are evolving quickly. Validate official docs, repos, and public-comment status before implementation.

*Definition*

## What AAMP is.

AAMP — Agentic Advertising Management Protocols — is IAB Tech Lab's umbrella initiative for agentic advertising work. It organizes the agentic roadmap across foundations, protocols, and trust infrastructure.

| Layer | Job | Examples |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Agentic Foundations | High-performance execution and control | ARTF, container runtime, real-time services |
| Agentic Protocols | Schemas, tools, and open-source reference implementations | Agentic Direct, Agentic Deals, Agentic Audiences, Buyer / Seller SDKs |
| Trust & Transparency | Identity, disclosure, accountability | Agent Registry, verification, audit |

*Structure*

## The three pillars of AAMP.

- **01 · Agentic Foundations** — The execution layer: how agent services can operate within host platforms, including real-time environments.
- **02 · Agentic Protocols** — The management and workflow layer: how buyer and seller agents discover, negotiate, transact, exchange signals, and complete setup tasks.
- **03 · Trust & Transparency** — The accountability layer: how the ecosystem verifies agents, understands authority, and preserves trust.

*Figure: Foundations (execution), protocols (management), and trust (accountability).*

*Agentic Foundations*

## ARTF: the real-time container runtime.

ARTF — Agentic Real Time Framework — defines a foundation for agent services operating inside a host platform. The model uses containers deployed into host infrastructure so the orchestrating platform can call agent services directly while preserving latency, cost, privacy, and operational controls.

- Containerized (OCI-compliant) service agents deployed into host infrastructure
- Direct calls by the orchestrating / host platform
- Bidstream mutation via declared intents the host can accept or reject
- Use cases: identity resolution, segmentation / deal activation, fraud detection, bid valuation
- Host platforms retain data control and SLAs; agents run with restricted network access
- Written primarily for engineers and product managers implementing the framework

**Status:** v1.0 is final — IAB Tech Lab announced the finalized release on 12 August 2026 (the GitHub v1.0 tag landed 20 July), adding an orchestration layer for node-to-node calls and a Rust reference implementation; the ARTF standards page still carries its stale "will be finalized soon" note, and the Agentic Task Force is soliciting v2 proposals. The press release describes reducing bid request/response time up to 80% (source: IAB Tech Lab — ARTF v1.0 press release (Nov 2025)) — a design target on the page, not a guaranteed benchmark. The number matters less than what it buys: colocation compresses transit time and expands thinking time at once — a compute budget inside the auction that never existed before. And the framework is a control surface, not a conscience: ARTF is neutral about what runs in the window; that remains a policy decision.

*Figure: Package once, deploy into the host, call directly — host keeps data control, SLAs, and audit.*

*Agentic Protocols*

## Agentic Audiences: signal exchange for agents.

Agentic Audiences, formerly UCP / User Context Protocol, defines how intelligent agents exchange identity, contextual, and reinforcement signals. The important shift is the use of embeddings as a compact, interoperable representation for signal exchange. Fewer raw identifiers move, but that is abstraction, not anonymisation; the data-protection obligations stay with the controller (see [the privacy reality](https://nofluffadvisory.com/topics/embeddings/#privacy)) — the same operating idea as [signal containerization](https://nofluffadvisory.com/writing/signal-containerization-agentic-advertising/).

- Formerly the User Context Protocol (UCP)
- Donated by LiveRamp to IAB Tech Lab
- Three signal types: identity, contextual, and reinforcement
- Encoded as dense embeddings of 256–1024 dimensions
- Designed to support sub-100ms response times for real-time bidding (a design target)
- Open-source repository (specification under CC BY 4.0; implementations under Apache 2.0)

Signals travel as compact vectors — typically 256–1024 dimensions (source: IAB Tech Lab / LiveRamp — Agentic Audiences (dense vectors of 256–1024 dimensions)) — instead of raw identifiers:

**agentic audiences — signal payload** (illustrative)

```json
{
  "signal_type": "contextual",
  "embedding": {
    "dim": 512,
    "vector": [0.0123, -0.0456, 0.0789, "… 512 floats …"]
  },
  "ttl_seconds": 1800,
  "privacy": { "raw_pii": false }
}
```

*Figure: Raw signals → embedding → exchange across agents, platforms, clean rooms, and measurement.*

One boundary worth naming: these are text-family embeddings — vectors that encode the who and the what of a moment. Text models famously lose numbers, geography, and time; a second family of [spatiotemporal embeddings](https://nofluffadvisory.com/writing/the-context-economy/#the-moment-has-four-dimensions) encodes the place and hour themselves (Google’s Population Dynamics Foundation Model is the public exemplar on the spatial axis; the hour of the week is the newer frontier). Nothing yet defines similarity between the two spaces — bridging them is a standards question this signal-exchange layer will eventually own.

*Trust & Transparency*

## Agent Registry: trust and transparency.

Agentic workflows require participants to know which agents exist, who operates them, what they are authorized to do, and how they should be verified. Agent Registry is the trust and transparency layer in the IAB Tech Lab roadmap.

- Agent identity, verification, and disclosure
- Registrants associate a GPP ID (including TCF GVL IDs) for validation
- A browsable directory plus a REST API; the registry is itself an MCP server
- Went live March 3, 2026; free to register; described as a "test and learn" phase
- Seller-agent verification ("ads.txt for agents") is a stated roadmap item, not a current feature

*Figure: Agent → operator → authority → verification → transaction → audit.*

*Foundations*

## Built on existing advertising standards.

The IAB Tech Lab approach starts from existing standards because those standards encode years of transaction, object, taxonomy, privacy, and measurement knowledge. Agentic systems need to reference those standards, not bypass them.

- **OpenRTB** — Real-time bidding objects; now enabled to carry Agentic Audiences.
- **AdCOM** — The common object model — basis for Agentic Ad Objects (now MCP-capable).
- **OpenDirect** — Direct-deal workflow — basis for Agentic Direct (now MCP-capable).
- **Deals API** — Programmatic deals — basis for Agentic Deals (now MCP-capable).
- **Taxonomies** — Content, Audience, Ad Product, and Privacy taxonomies agents read.
- **Agentic Direct / Deals / Ad Objects** — Existing standards made MCP-capable for agents.
- **Buyer / Seller Agent SDKs** — Open-source reference agents built on AdCOM, OpenDirect, Deals API, OpenRTB.
- **Agentic Bid / Agentic Mobile** — The Q2 2026 MCP-capable target has passed: Agentic Mobile has a public repo with an MCP server against a v1.0.0-draft spec (last pushed June 2026); Agentic Bid has no public IAB Tech Lab repo as of September 2026 — track official status.

*Complementarity*

## AdCP and AAMP: not a simple either / or.

The useful question is not which acronym wins. It is which layer solves which problem. AdCP is a task and workflow language for advertising agents. AAMP is IAB Tech Lab's umbrella for extending existing standards into the agentic era. ARTF is the execution runtime; Agentic Audiences is a signal exchange layer. These can be complementary when boundaries are clear — the repository-level head-to-head, with both sides' press-vs-code gaps printed, is in [AdCP vs AAMP: The Retrofit and the Greenfield](https://nofluffadvisory.com/writing/adcp-vs-aamp/). The spec-plus-open-implementation pattern is already running on the sell side: Prebid.org stewards AdCP's sell-side reference code as the Prebid Sales Agent, examined in [the Sales Agent essay](https://nofluffadvisory.com/writing/the-prebid-sales-agent/) and running inside the publisher execution layer mapped in [Prebid & Header Bidding Infrastructure](https://nofluffadvisory.com/standards/prebid-header-bidding/).

- **AdCP** (3.1 GA · 3.2 rc.3) — Role: Agent task and workflow protocol Best question: What can the agent discover, ask, buy, activate, govern, or report? Main risk if misread: Treated as complete infrastructure rather than a workflow layer
- **AAMP** (2.3 (buyer/seller agent tags Jul 22-29, 2026 · umbrella repo: no releases)) — Role: Umbrella standards initiative Best question: How does agentic advertising extend existing standards? Main risk if misread: Treated as one monolithic spec
- **ARTF** (v1.0 final · Aug 2026) — Role: Containerized real-time execution Best question: How can services run inside host platforms with low latency and control? Main risk if misread: Confused with a buyer workflow protocol
- **Agentic Audiences** (v0.1 drafts · no tagged release (press: "v1.0")) — Role: Embedding-based signal exchange Best question: How do agents exchange identity, contextual, and reinforcement signals? Main risk if misread: Treated as another segment taxonomy
- **OpenRTB / AdCOM / Deals API / OpenDirect** (foundational) — Role: Foundational transaction and object models Best question: What existing market objects should agentic systems reference? Main risk if misread: Bypassed by new agent workflows

*Figure: Define the layer before debating the acronym.*

*Implementation*

## Implementation lens by company type.

Pick your company type to see what to build first — and the AAMP frameworks and standards it leans on.

**SSP / exchange — Focus.** ARTF containers, bidstream mutation, deals, seller agents, agent registry, signal exchange.

*Key protocols: ARTF, Agentic Deals, Agent Registry, Agentic Audiences.*

**DSP / buying platform — Focus.** Buyer agents, agentic deals, signals, governance, OpenRTB / AdCOM alignment, measurement.

*Key protocols: Buyer Agent SDK, Agentic Deals, OpenRTB / AdCOM, Agentic Audiences.*

**Publisher — Focus.** Seller agent, inventory discovery, OpenDirect, deal workflow, content monetization, agent registry.

*Key protocols: Seller Agent SDK, OpenDirect, Agent Registry.*

**Data / identity / signals vendor — Focus.** Agentic Audiences, embeddings, identity / context / reinforcement signals, provenance, activation.

*Key protocols: Agentic Audiences, embeddings, Agent Registry.*

**Agency / brand — Focus.** Buyer agents, governance, direct and programmatic workflows, reporting, approval, audit.

*Key protocols: Buyer Agent SDK, Agentic Direct, governance.*

**Measurement / verification — Focus.** Event flow, audit, outcome reporting, fraud, suitability, trust.

*Key protocols: Agent Registry, audit, OpenRTB.*

**Creative / content — Focus.** Agentic ad objects, creative formats, approvals, brand safety, content monetization.

*Key protocols: Agentic Ad Objects, AdCOM, brand safety.*

*Watch*

## Standards watchlist.

What to track as these specifications evolve. Roadmap timing reflects official statements at the validation date and can change.

- **AAMP roadmap** — Track new releases and reference implementations.
- **ARTF v1 / v2** — v1.0 is final (Aug 2026). Track v2 proposals (the Agentic Task Force is soliciting them), the Go / Rust reference implementations, and container runtime requirements.
- **Agentic Audiences** — Track embedding schemas, signal types, privacy guidance, and repository changes.
- **Agent Registry** — Track registration requirements, verification model, and adoption.
- **Agentic Direct / Deals / Ad Objects** — Track how existing standards become MCP-capable.
- **AdCP 3.1 (GA) → 3.2 (rc.3)** — Track adoption obligations, task changes, and implementation guidance — plus what the 3.2 release candidate changes in delivery, reach, and vendor-metric semantics.
- **OpenRTB / AdCOM bridge** — Track how real-time buying objects connect to agentic workflows.
- **Governance and audit** — Track human-in-the-loop, signature, consent, and accountability requirements.

*No Fluff POV*

## Scale comes from standards, not better prompts.

Agentic advertising will not scale because agents get better at writing prompts. It will scale when agents can operate inside standards-based systems with clear schemas, runtimes, permissions, registries, provenance, audit, and outcome measurement.

- Use existing standards wherever possible.
- Define the layer before debating the acronym.
- Do not let agentic workflows bypass accountability.
- Treat embeddings as signal infrastructure, not magic.
- Treat containers as execution infrastructure, not generic AI wrappers.
- Use protocols to reduce ambiguity, not to create theatre.

*Stack fit*

## Where this fits in the full standards stack.

**The layer map**

AAMP, ARTF, and Agentic Audiences put agents on the existing rails — deal workflow, runtime, signal exchange, and trust — and overlap AdCP at the deal plane. Around it sit the transaction rails (OpenRTB, AdCOM, OpenDirect, Deals API), privacy and consent constraints (GPP, TCF, platform and OS rules), measurement trust (verification, OM SDK, accreditation), and the research evidence that validates outcomes.

- [Core AdTech Standards](https://nofluffadvisory.com/standards/core-adtech-standards/)
- [Privacy & Consent Standards](https://nofluffadvisory.com/standards/privacy-consent-platform-apis/)
- [Measurement & Media Quality](https://nofluffadvisory.com/standards/measurement-verification-media-quality/)
- [Research & Measurement Science](https://nofluffadvisory.com/standards/research-measurement-science/)

*Related*

## Related materials.

- [AdCP — Advertising Context Protocol](https://nofluffadvisory.com/standards/adcp/)
- [AdCP vs AAMP (essay)](https://nofluffadvisory.com/writing/adcp-vs-aamp/)
- [Prebid & Header Bidding](https://nofluffadvisory.com/standards/prebid-header-bidding/)
- [Agentic Transformation](https://nofluffadvisory.com/services/playbooks/agentic-transformation/)
- [Signal Containerization (essay)](https://nofluffadvisory.com/writing/signal-containerization-agentic-advertising/)
- [Enterprise Data Collaboration](https://nofluffadvisory.com/services/playbooks/multicloud-data-orchestration/)
- [Semantic Infrastructure](https://nofluffadvisory.com/services/playbooks/multicloud-data-orchestration/ecosystem-surfaces/semantic-infrastructure/)
- [DSP / Agentic Buying](https://nofluffadvisory.com/services/playbooks/multicloud-data-orchestration/ecosystem-surfaces/dsp-agentic-buying/)
- [BI / MMM / Decision Intelligence](https://nofluffadvisory.com/services/playbooks/multicloud-data-orchestration/ecosystem-surfaces/bi-mmm-decision-intelligence/)
- [AdCP Ecosystem prototype](https://nofluffadvisory.com/building/adcp-ecosystem/)
- [Core AdTech Standards](https://nofluffadvisory.com/standards/core-adtech-standards/)
- [Privacy & Consent Standards](https://nofluffadvisory.com/standards/privacy-consent-platform-apis/)
- [Measurement & Media Quality](https://nofluffadvisory.com/standards/measurement-verification-media-quality/)
- [Research & Measurement Science](https://nofluffadvisory.com/standards/research-measurement-science/)
- [Writing: Agentic Advertising](https://nofluffadvisory.com/topics/agentic-advertising/)
- [Glossary: AAMP](https://nofluffadvisory.com/glossary/#aamp)
- [Embeddings in Advertising](https://nofluffadvisory.com/topics/embeddings/)

### Primary sources to validate (11 sources)

- [AdCP Registry](https://docs.adcontextprotocol.org/docs/registry/) — AgenticAdvertising.org. Official docs; confidence: primary; checked 2026-06-07. Public REST API for agent discovery, brand resolution, property lookup, and authorization; validates adagents.json (publisher) against brand.json (operator). Supports: adagents.json, Discovery/identity, Authorization.
- [IAB Tech Lab — AAMP (Agentic Advertising Management Protocols)](https://iabtechlab.com/standards/aamp-agentic-advertising-management-protocols/) — IAB Tech Lab. Official standards page; confidence: primary; checked 2026-06-07. AAMP is the umbrella initiative for IAB Tech Lab agentic work; three pillars — Agentic Foundations, Agentic Protocols, Trust and Transparency — built on existing standards. Supports: What AAMP is, Three pillars, Builds on existing standards.
- [IAB Tech Lab — Agentic Advertising and AI](https://iabtechlab.com/standards/agentic-advertising-and-ai/) — IAB Tech Lab. Official standards page; confidence: primary; checked 2026-06-07. Standards hub: "AAMP has 3 pillars - Foundations, Protocols, and Trust" and builds on OpenRTB, AdCOM, OpenDirect, Deals API, and taxonomies. Supports: Three pillars, Core standards.
- [IAB Tech Lab — Navigating the Agentic Frontier (2026 roadmap)](https://iabtechlab.com/navigating-the-agentic-frontier-the-iab-tech-lab-2026-roadmap/) — IAB Tech Lab. Official standards page; confidence: primary; checked 2026-06-07. OpenDirect (Agentic Direct), AdCOM (Agentic Ad Objects), and Deals API (Agentic Deals) "now MCP-capable"; Buyer/Seller Agent SDK v2.0 available; Agentic Bid/Mobile stated for Q2 2026. Supports: Roadmap items + stated status, MCP-capable standards.
- [IAB Tech Lab — Agentic Real Time Framework (ARTF)](https://iabtechlab.com/standards/artf/) — IAB Tech Lab. Official standards page; confidence: primary; checked 2026-06-07. ARTF v1.0 released for public comment; containerized service agents inside host platforms; design target of "low to sub-millisecond" responses for RTB. Supports: ARTF definition, Public-comment status, Use cases.
- [Press release — IAB Tech Lab announces ARTF v1.0 for public comment](https://iabtechlab.com/press-releases/iab-tech-lab-announces-agentic-rtb-framework-artf-v1-0-for-public-comment/) — IAB Tech Lab. Official press release; confidence: primary; checked 2026-06-07. ARTF can reduce bid request/response time "up to 80%"; supports MCP and A2A as frameworks; names Index Exchange, Chalice, The Trade Desk in the announcement. Supports: Latency figure (80%), Public-comment milestone.
- [IAB Tech Lab — Breaking down the walls (containerized agent advertising)](https://iabtechlab.com/breaking-down-the-walls-iab-tech-labs-blueprint-for-containerized-agent-powered-advertising/) — IAB Tech Lab. Official standards page; confidence: supporting; checked 2026-06-07. OCI-compliant containers; no external network access except orchestrator comms; host retains data control + SLAs; agents declare intents and bidstream mutations for accept/reject. Supports: Container runtime model, Bidstream mutation controls.
- [IAB Tech Lab — Agentic Audiences (formerly UCP)](https://iabtechlab.com/standards/agentic-audiences/) — IAB Tech Lab. Official standards page; confidence: primary; checked 2026-06-07. Agentic Audiences (formerly the User Context Protocol), donated by LiveRamp; identity/contextual/reinforcement signals as dense embeddings of 256–1024 dimensions. Supports: Agentic Audiences, UCP rename, LiveRamp donation, Embeddings.
- [IAB Tech Lab — agentic-audiences (GitHub)](https://github.com/IABTechLab/agentic-audiences) — IAB Tech Lab. Official GitHub; confidence: primary; checked 2026-06-07. Open standard by LiveRamp; "formerly known as the User Context Protocol (UCP)"; 256–1024-dim vectors; spec under CC BY 4.0, implementations under Apache 2.0. Supports: Repository, Dimension range, Licensing.
- [IAB Tech Lab — Data standards for the agentic age](https://iabtechlab.com/data-standards-for-the-agentic-age/) — IAB Tech Lab. Official standards page; confidence: supporting; checked 2026-06-07. Explains the three signal types (identity, contextual, reinforcement) and embedding exchange designed to support sub-100ms RTB response times. Supports: Signal types, Embedding rationale.
- [IAB Tech Lab — Introducing the Agent Registry](https://iabtechlab.com/introducing-the-iab-tech-lab-agent-registry/) — IAB Tech Lab. Official standards page; confidence: primary; checked 2026-06-07. Trust/transparency layer for agent identity, verification, and disclosure; registrants associate a GPP ID (incl. TCF GVL IDs); the registry is itself an MCP server; "test and learn" phase. Supports: Agent Registry, Identity/verification, Status.

> Platform capabilities and naming change quickly. Last validated: 2026-09-08. Check current documentation before implementation.