Observed Signal · Jun 10, 2026 · Partnership · Source: https://martechseries.com/feed/ · Impact: 3/5 · Sentiment: Positive
Affinity Joins AdCP as Founding Member
Affinity, a global ad tech company, announced on June 10, 2026 that it has joined the Ad Context Protocol (AdCP) as a Founding Member. AdCP is an independent nonprofit creating an open standard for AI-powered, agentic advertising that lets autonomous agents negotiate, plan, and transact media with publisher agents. Affinity said it will contribute expertise and inventory representation for non-traditional ad surfaces—browsers, mobile and TV operating systems, app stores, launchers and search/AI answer engines—that largely sit outside programmatic auction infrastructure. Affinity’s CEO Lavin Punjabi said including these surfaces in the standard from the outset is critical to avoid leaving them behind as agentic media buying expands across the open web.
Joining an open standard body for AI-powered (agentic) advertising helps ensure non-traditional inventory surfaces are represented in emerging agentic media-buying standards, which affects supply representation and interoperability across the ad ecosystem.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- Affinity joined the Ad Context Protocol (AdCP) as a Founding Member on June 10, 2026.
- AdCP is an independent nonprofit developing an open standard for AI-powered (agentic) advertising.
- Affinity's inventory includes browsers, mobile and TV operating systems, app stores, launchers and search/AI answer engines.
- Affinity will help standardize representation of non-traditional ad surfaces and demand-supply interoperability within AdCP.
- Lavin Punjabi, CEO of Affinity, is quoted emphasizing the need to include these surfaces in agentic advertising standards.
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Ad Context Protocol Launch Enables Agent-to-Agent Ads
Industry coalition launches Ad Context Protocol (AdCP), a new open standard for agentic advertising infrastructure. AdCP defines how AI agents communicate with advertising platforms and with each other when buying and selling inventory, designed to work with existing programmatic tools while enabling future agent-to-agent transactions. Founding members include Yahoo, Optable, PubMatic, Scope3, Swivel, and Triton Digital, with support from The Weather Company, Classify, Magnite, MiQ, LG Ad Solutions, Kargo, Butler/Till, Raptive, and Samba TV. AdCP is governed by a neutral working group to encourage open contribution and broad adoption. At launch, it includes protocols for audience activation and media buying to help advertisers discover and activate segments and for agents to execute campaign line items across platforms. The initiative aims to connect agents to current tech stacks and, over time, enable transactions without existing infrastructure, mirroring OpenRTB’s impact on programmatic growth.
Ad Context Protocol: Standardizing Agentic Advertising Solutions
The Ad Context Protocol (AdCP) is being formed as a consortium of ad-tech and AI advertising software vendors to standardize protocols for agentic solutions across the advertising supply chain, enabling negotiation, planning, and execution of media campaigns. Co-founding members include Triton Digital, Yahoo!, PubMatic, Scope3, Optable and Swivel, each committing a $10,000 annual budget to support the initiative. AdCP aims to provide standard protocols for agentic advertising and is described as a potential open-source, 'Prebid-type layer' backed by industry participants. The group also envisions delivering solid documentation and demonstrated tests within a year to validate the protocol's practicality for publishers and advertisers.
ADvendio Joins AgenticAdvertising.org to Advance AdCP Standards
ADvendio, a provider of advertising solutions, has joined AgenticAdvertising.org, an industry initiative focused on developing standards for agentic advertising and AdCP. The move aims to support the advancement of AdCP standards, which relate to autonomous AI-driven media execution. This participation signals ADvendio's commitment to the growing field of agentic advertising, where AI agents automate media planning, buying, and optimization.
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