Establishing Trusted Standards for Agentic Video Buying

WPP Media is developing a Buyer Agent for Video as part of an Agentic Standards Initiative with premium media owners, platforms, and standards bodies to define how TV and video buyer and seller agents interact safely, transparently, and at scale .

The media industry is on the verge of its biggest evolution since the introduction of programmatic: agentic media.  If programmatic changed the way media was bought, agentic AI has the potential to change the way media decisions are made — from planning and activation to optimization, measurement, and reconciliation.  

Across the advertising ecosystem, companies are announcing agents designed to automate parts of buying and selling. But trusted agentic media cannot be built by one side of the market alone. For agentic buying and selling to work at scale, both sides of the marketplace need common standards for how buyer and seller agents communicate, validate, and execute approved decisions.  

That is why we are collaborating with premium media owners, technology platforms, and standards bodies on an Agentic Standards Initiative for Video Buying to co-develop shared technical, workflow, and governance standards for TV and video buyer-seller agent communication.  

As part of the initiative, we are developing a Buyer Agent for Video within WPP Open, our agentic marketing platform. The Buyer Agent will operate as part of our Agentic Activation Orchestration Layer, the infrastructure inside WPP Open that coordinates how our people, agents, data, tools, approval controls, and partner systems interact.  

Our initial focus is linear TV, connected TV, and premium video — areas where high-value investment and complex transaction workflows make trust, governance, and interoperability essential. Over time, our learnings from this work will inform our approach across other channels.  

Our goal is to move the market beyond isolated agent announcements and toward a common foundation for trusted agent-to-agent media buying. 

Why TV and video buying need agentic standards  

We see TV and video as areas where agentic buying can most meaningfully improve speed, intelligence, and responsiveness. They are also areas where the governance models required to scale agentic exchange safely are still emerging.  Without common standards, our industry risks creating a new fragmentation layer: bespoke integrations between every buyer and seller, inconsistent agent-to-agent interpretation, exposure of client strategy, opaque decisioning, and insufficient controls around live campaign activation.  

The stakes are significant. Linear and connected TV represent some of the most valuable media investments our clients make. Scaling agentic buying safely in these environments requires shared workflows, common language, clear decision rights, financial controls, privacy protections, validation steps, and transparent audit trails. 

The opportunity is not simply to automate TV and video buying, but to create trusted infrastructure and standards for better media decision-making — infrastructure that can also inform agentic interaction in other channels as capabilities mature.  

A trusted standard for advertisers, agencies, and media owners  

Many agentic media announcements so far have focused on individual platforms or intermediaries launching their own agents. Our approach is different: we are working directly with both sides of the marketplace to define standards that support advertisers, agencies, and media owners.  

As agents become an increasingly important interface for media decisioning, advertisers need confidence that their agents operate in their interests. Agencies have a critical role to play as trusted representatives of advertisers’ strategy, data, business goals, and growth priorities. At the same time, media owners need confidence that agentic workflows will protect their inventory, pricing signals, data, and commercial models in real commercial environments.  

That is why we are working directly with partners including Comcast Advertising and its global adtech platform FreeWheel, Disney Advertising, Fox Advertising, NBCUniversal, Netflix, and Paramount as well as standards bodies IAB Tech Lab and Prebid.org to define how the WPP Buyer Agent and media owner Seller Agents communicate, validate, support approved media transaction workflows, and escalate decisions.  

Through the Agentic Standards Initiative, we aim to create and share common technical, workflow, and governance standards that can support agentic interaction responsibly and at scale for the broader industry. Our shared aim is to avoid a future where every media owner, platform, and agency builds a different agentic integration — and instead help the industry capture the growth opportunities AI can create in a trusted and interoperable way.  

What  we’re building 

Our Buyer Agent for Video, while initially inspired by the IAB Tech Lab’s reference implementation, is being developed independently within WPP Open and works in sync with our Agentic Activation Orchestration Layer. 

At the same time, media owners and platform partners will each operate their own Seller Agents and orchestration layers. The challenge we are solving together is how to ensure these systems work together safely and consistently.   Our collaboration with partners is focused on defining and testing communication standards between Video Buyer Agents and Video Seller Agents.  

Initial areas for alignment include audience discovery, inventory evaluation, planning recommendations, seller-agent communication, proposal and approval workflows, programmatic guaranteed, private marketplaces, activation handoffs, pacing and optimization, measurement and reconciliation, compliance checks, and audit trails.  

Designed for trust, governance, and scale 

Agentic video buying creates significant opportunity, but it also creates new forms of risk.  Agentic workflows may require access to sensitive information, including audience strategies, planning logic, campaign parameters, pricing assumptions, optimization signals, and client-specific buying rules. Agent-to-agent workflows can also introduce operational risk when buyer and seller agents are built on different models, instructions, and tools. 

The standards we are developing with partners through the Agentic Standards Initiative are designed to help reduce those risks through common workflows, validation steps, approval paths, auditability, and clear separation between probabilistic recommendations and deterministic execution. High-impact financial or activation decisions require explicit controls, approval thresholds, and accountable human oversight. 

This approach builds on our existing governance principles within WPP Open, including workspace isolation, no training on client data without explicit permission, PII restrictions by default, role-based access controls, continuous monitoring, and Safe & Capable verification. 

Why this matters for advertisers 

For advertisers, the rise of agentic media creates both opportunity and complexity.  The opportunity is faster access to intelligence, more responsive activation, more effective use of premium supply, and better optimization across partners. The complexity is a growing ecosystem of agents across platforms, media owners, agencies, technology vendors, and internal systems — each with different incentives, capabilities, and levels of governance.  

In addition to establishing a trusted buyer-agent strategy, the combination of our Buyer Agent, Agentic Activation Orchestration Layer, and broader Open Agentic Media Framework is designed to give clients:  

• Faster and more consistent access to premium TV and video opportunities  

• Better application of Open Intelligence in activation  

• Reduced fragmentation across broadcasters, platforms, and partners  

• Stronger financial and data controls  

• Transparent decisioning and audit trails  

• Safer testing and scaling of agentic buying  

Perhaps most importantly, our approach is aligned with our vision for a future in which human expertise is augmented by agents, not replaced by them.  

Ultimately, the value we create for advertisers will be measured not only in speed gained, but in risk avoided: fewer bespoke integrations, fewer opaque decisions, stronger protection for client data and strategy, and more accountable use of AI in media investment.  

Shaping the next media marketplace 

Today’s announcement is part of our continuing leadership at the frontier of change and innovation in media.  At the birth of the programmatic era, WPP created and launched Xaxis, playing a critical role in the development of programmatic media and helping shift how data, technology, and automation are applied to media investment.  

Now, the coming agentic era represents a similar, and potentially even more dramatic, evolution. This time, the opportunity is not just to automate transactions, but to make media decisions more intelligent, transparent, and interoperable.  Doing so will require shared standards, trusted workflows, and governance models that allow the ecosystem to scale responsibly.  

“Two decades ago, the move to programmatic marked a fundamental change in how media was bought and sold. We expect agentic media to have an even bigger impact on our industry in the months and years ahead. The companies that lead this next era will be the ones that combine intelligence, interoperability, and governance to define how media decisions are made. That’s what we are building with our partners: a trusted buyer-agent strategy designed to operate in our clients’ interests, maximize the value of their media investments, deepen consumer relationships, and translate intelligence into growth.”   — Brian Lesser, CEO, WPP Media   

“Against the backdrop of uncertainty that comes from the emergence of any new technology wave, it’s critical the industry focuses its efforts on architecting the right, scalable blueprint for an agentic future that delivers for marketers. WPP Media’s Agentic Standards Initiative is an important step towards creating this future and aligns well our long-held philosophy on supporting initiatives that prioritize transparency, trust and industry interoperability."   — James Rooke President, Comcast Advertising 

"The future of media buying isn't just automated – it's intelligent, interoperable, and outcome-driven. The real opportunity is giving buyer and seller agents a common foundation to make better decisions, faster, while preserving the trust and accountability premium advertising demands. We're excited to work with WPP Media and industry partners to help establish the standards that will unlock the next generation of premium video advertising."  — Jamie Power, Senior Vice President, Addressable Sales, Disney Advertising  

“We’re pleased to partner with Brian and his team at WPP Media to help advance industry standards for agentic media buying. Establishing a shared framework for transparency, interoperability, and governance will be key to scaling innovation across premium video.”   — Jeff Collins, President, Advertising Sales, Marketing and Brand Partnerships, Fox Corporation.  

“Paramount’s continued and increasing investment in driving innovation extends through our partners.  We are excited to work with WPP to leverage frontier technologies like agentic AI, pushing forward new ways for buyers and sellers to collaborate for the benefit of brand marketers and the future of TV advertising."   — Travis Scoles, EVP, Advanced Advertising, Paramount  

“IAB Tech Lab is delighted to work with WPP Media to establish new technical standards and enhance existing ones that will define how agentic advertising scales across the industry. We're excited that the Tech Lab’s Agentic Ad Management Protocols (AAMP) have served as an important reference for WPP Media’s Buyer Agent, demonstrating how open, interoperable standards can enable buyer and seller agents to communicate, validate, transact, and operate within trusted governance frameworks. We look forward to collaborating with WPP and the broader ecosystem to reduce fragmentation, strengthen transparency, and build the technical foundation for responsible, scalable agentic media buying.”   — Anthony Katsur, CEO at IAB Tech Lab. 

"As agentic technologies reshape digital advertising, the industry has a unique opportunity to build a more transparent, interoperable, and efficient ecosystem. ADCP is an important foundation for that future, enabling trusted communication between buyers and sellers at scale. We're excited to work alongside WPP and other industry leaders to advance these efforts and, through the Prebid Sales Agent, help drive the open standards and innovation that will shape the next generation of digital advertising."   — Mike Racic, President, Prebid.org  

Initial testing with our partners has begun with the goal of moving from alpha and beta testing to a model capable of supporting large-scale TV and video investment over the next 6–9 months.  We look forward to sharing our findings, as well as reference workflows, technical learnings, and proposed standards for broader industry use in early 2027.