• by Laurie Sullivan , 3 hours ago

IAB Tech Lab, the standards operator for the non-profit's technical arm, introduced its "Agentic RTB Framework (ARTF) v1.0" for public comment on Thursday, paving the way for all types of media-buying marketplaces.

The framework is expected to change real-time bidding performance and agentic interoperability across programmatic.

The framework follows the so-called "AdCP" protocol introduced last month by a supply-side consortium -- the Agentic Advertising Standard & Community -- for agentic media buying/selling.

"Allowing agents and technologies to operate within the same virtual environment, we’re creating a foundation for agentic workflows and near-instantaneous trading," said Anthony Katsur, CEO, IAB Tech Lab.

He believes the framework sets the groundwork for an "interoperable, high-performance ecosystem” because it reduces the current ~600–800ms round-trip time for bid requests and responses by as much as 80%.

This is done by enabling technologies to interact in the same data center, rather than across networks. This accelerates the entire auction process while reducing computational overhead and energy use. 

The specification -- ARTF v1.0 framework -- introduces a containerized architecture intended to enable faster communication and more efficient data exchange between technologies operating within the same data center. The proposal will remain open for comment until January 15, 2026.

Katsur said the release of the framework took months of engineering and collaboration across the industry. “We’ve been working toward this for some time," he said.

He believes the industry, with the framework, is “building the control plane for agentic collaboration, where DSPs, SSPs, and other services can communicate at high speed within the same virtual machine.”

Some companies have already begun to make this transition. Amazon rebuilt its ad system into a full-funnel advertising platform with help from agentic technology, and announced the change this week.

Baird Equity Research released a note Friday that explains how Amazon is “repositioning itself from the retail media powerhouse to the ‘open web.” From that the company should be “capable of competing against any large-scale ad network and DSP, with a unified offering enabled by AI-powered automation, expanded premium ad inventory, and a consolidated campaign architecture.”

The focus of the new offering — “Ads Agent” — presents some similarity to Google’s Performance Max and Meta’s Advantage+, automating key parts of ad creation, placement and measurement, Baird analysts wrote.

Amazon will still rely on commerce signals and purchase attribution, which may be less beneficial to non-endemic off-Amazon or upper-funnel marketers, according to the research note.