As artificial intelligence becomes more deeply embedded in how advertising is planned, bought, and delivered, the industry is confronting a new challenge of scale without fragmentation. This issue is especially important for the MarTech ecosystem, where interoperability and trust underpin nearly every transaction. In response, IAB Tech Lab has announced the release of its Agentic Roadmap, outlining how digital advertising can expand agentic buying and selling by extending existing standards rather than rebuilding the market from scratch.
The Agentic Roadmap sets out a practical framework for enabling secure and interoperable agentic execution across digital advertising. Instead of introducing entirely new technical languages, IAB Tech Lab proposes evolving the standards already used throughout the industry. To accelerate delivery of this vision, the organization also confirmed a significant engineering investment dedicated specifically to artificial intelligence development, including the addition of new technical resources.
Marketing Technology Insights: ElementalTV Launches SARAH, an Agentic Sales Assistant for CTV Publishers
“Agentic execution is already part of how digital advertising operates,” said Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab. “Open, interoperable standards are what make that possible, and our focus is on scaling it responsibly. The fastest and smartest way forward is to build on an existing shared foundation, not introduce multiple new standards that create fragmentation.”
According to IAB Tech Lab, the roadmap builds on a wide range of established standards that already support advertising transactions, delivery, measurement, and privacy. These include technologies that govern how ads are bought and sold, how performance is measured, and how regulatory compliance is maintained. The roadmap also incorporates newer agentic control plane standards that define how large language models and autonomous systems can participate in real time advertising execution without sacrificing performance.
To modernize these foundations, IAB Tech Lab is integrating them with newer high performance protocols such as Model Context Protocol, Agent2Agent, and gRPC. This approach is intended to enable machine speed coordination between independent systems while preserving governance, transparency, and trust.
“The industry gets the best of both worlds,” Katsur continued. “High performance agentic execution combined with the interoperability, governance, and trust the market already relies on, without reinventing everything.”
Marketing Technology Insights: Slingwave Unveils AI-Powered Unified Measurement Platform for Ecommerce Brands
For agencies, publishers, brands, and technology providers, the roadmap is designed to shorten time to value. By modernizing execution instead of replacing infrastructure, organizations can reduce integration complexity and operational risk while adopting agentic workflows more quickly.
Looking ahead, IAB Tech Lab plans to extend these efforts in 2026 through open source reference implementations for buyer and seller agents, standardized agent profiles, protocol buffer mappings, and additional tools informed by industry feedback. The organization will also continue prioritizing trust, measurement, and transaction integrity, aligned with existing privacy and consent frameworks.
Industry leaders have expressed support for the initiative. “IAB and IAB Tech Lab have always been incredible leaders in their focus on interoperability, giving the industry a common foundation to scale responsibly,” said Ryan McConville, EVP and Chief Product Officer, Advertising Platforms and Operations, NBCUniversal Advertising and Partnerships. George Panagopoulos, Chief Technology Officer at Experian Marketing Services, added, “Scale only works when interoperability is real.”
To support adoption, IAB Tech Lab will host a public webinar on January 28, 2026, followed by a series of in person Agentic AI Boot Camps beginning in February. As agentic execution continues to advance, the Agentic Roadmap positions IAB Tech Lab as a central force guiding the industry toward scalable intelligence built on shared standards.
Marketing Technology Insights: Ampd Announces the Public Launch of Ampd Signal
For media inquiries, you can write to our MarTech Newsroom at info@intentamplify.com
