29 October 2025

Meet agentic advertising: The imminent renaissance of programmatic media

This article is not written or presented as legal advice or opinion. Readers should neither act nor rely on the opinions expressed here without seeking legal counsel.

In summary

• Advertising is entering its next great evolution, agentic advertising, where autonomous AI agents transact media on behalf of marketers.
• As signal quality drops and data granularity fades, these agents will learn, decide, and act with greater autonomy, demanding a new layer of human governance.
• Measurement, accountability, and control will depend on interpreting what’s left, not chasing what’s lost.
• So, why do you need to know? The winners will be those who learn fastest, not those who wait longest.

A new chapter in programmatic

Advertising is shifting again, this time toward agentic advertising, where intelligent software agents act on behalf of marketers. A new emerging technology that’s already reshaping programmatic, and it’s happening fast.

Where programmatic once evolved through a web of DSPs, SSPs, and intermediaries, each solving for scale and efficiency, this next phase calls for simplicity, autonomy, and total transparency.

Agentic advertising envisions a world where decision-making AI systems transact media without constant human hand-holding or opaque middle layers.

Imagine an AI agent tirelessly evaluating impressions, dynamically allocating budgets, optimising creatives, and negotiating directly with publisher agents via emerging on-chain protocols such as the AdContext Protocol (ADCP).

Or as Brian O’Kelley, CEO of Scope3 and Founder & CEO of Xandr DSP, puts it: “Brand stories change the equation of targeting. Instead of forcing marketers to translate their brand narrative into hundreds of checkboxes and taxonomies, the prompt, or story, itself becomes the targeting.”

Autonomy over algorithms

In this new landscape, bidder logic is no longer trapped within walled gardens. Marketers will orchestrate their own agents, tailored to strategy, governed by KPIs, and powered by verifiable data.

On-chain contextual bidding: Context isn’t inferred or guessed. It’s declared, public, and auditable.

Interoperable, not intermediated: Buyers and sellers can collaborate directly, reducing reliance on complex supply paths.

Verifiability and trustlessness: Every bid and decision can be recorded on transparent ledgers, not hidden behind proprietary walls.

This isn’t the end of programmatic infrastructure, it’s its reinvention. DSPs will evolve into configurable frameworks where marketers can design and deploy their own buying agents. SSPs will transform into transparent data connectors that verify and exchange context in real time.

Together, they’ll move from closed, monolithic systems to modular, open networks, forming the backbone of a more decentralised and transparent media economy.

Measurement is changing, and so must accountability

As media becomes more autonomous, measurement is becoming less certain.

From Louder’s vantage point, this shift is already visible. We’re not going to see the same level of granularity on media performance we once had. Signal loss, privacy reform, and AI-led optimisation mean we’re moving from deterministic visibility to probabilistic confidence.

At Louder, we’re already seeing early forms of these systems appear in bid automation and dynamic creative optimisation, hinting at what’s next.

The next era of measurement will test holdcos, agencies, and advertisers alike, especially those built on the promise of precision.

In a world where every impression is a negotiation between agents, human interpretation becomes more valuable than ever to “audit, explain and justify”.

As signal quality drops, the question isn’t what we can still measure, it’s how we interpret what’s left.

The human in the loop

If you’re a programmatic trader today, here’s the fine print in bold. You’re not being replaced by AI. You’re being invited to train it.

Agentic advertising won’t eliminate human expertise, it will elevate it. The programmatic trader now becomes a logic architect, a prompt engineer, and a governance strategist.

• Less “toggle in UI.”
• More “govern logic, control outcomes.”

Humans will stay at the heart of it all, defining the ethics, accountability, and intent behind every decision. Because the agents we build should serve both performance and privacy, not one at the expense of the other.

Publisher control and the promise of better yields

On the sell side, publishers are entering an equally transformative phase.

Agentic systems promise richer, verifiable inventory context, potentially driving higher yields for transparent, high-quality supply.

But they also introduce new challenges:

• How do publishers manage autonomous agents bidding on their inventory?
• How do they ensure value remains equitable and data remains sovereign?

The path forward will require a balance of openness, collaboration, and verifiability, where both buyers and sellers co-own the truth of each transaction.

A note on history, and what lies ahead

When programmatic advertising emerged nearly two decades ago, the industry trembled at the prospect of job losses.

Instead, it created new expertise, new teams, and new specialisations.

Now, with agentic advertising, we stand at a similar inflection point. Yes, automation will deepen. Yes, the stack will simplify. But once again, roles will evolve, not disappear.

This isn’t about ripping up the rulebook overnight, but it does call for a mindset shift, towards clearer systems, smarter design, and technology that serves people, not the other way around.

Louder’s recommendations

• Prepare for co-agency - Humans and machines must operate in partnership. Build governance frameworks that define when and how AI systems act.
• Invest in privacy-resilient measurement - As granularity fades, ensure your data architecture (first-party, consented, cloud-integrated) can sustain performance insight.
• Redefine programmatic roles - Equip your teams to move beyond platform operation into agent orchestration, logic design, and ethical AI deployment.
• Prioritise transparency - Adopt interoperable, auditable technologies that reinforce trust across supply and demand, from bid logic to reporting.
• Stay adaptive - Expect rapid evolution in protocols like AdContext and Scope3’s sustainable supply frameworks. The winners will be those who learn fastest, not those who wait longest.

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