The Rebuild: How Agentic Advertising Will Redefine the Future of Media

Remember the feeling? That moment when you realize the ground is shifting beneath an entire industry, and the early movers are about to capture outsized returns while everyone else is still figuring out what's happening. We're in one of those moments right now.

The advertising industry is being completely reimagined. The window to shape our industry for what’s next, get in early and define the standards, is open right now.

Our team has always challenged the status quo. We started by making the invisible visible, using sustainability metrics as a new lens to pinpoint and eliminate waste within the media supply chain. Looking ahead, we see something bigger: a future where intelligent agents could simplify the supply chain, fundamentally transforming how brands and publishers connect.

This is the beginning of the agentic universe. And we're building it together.

What is agentic advertising?

Agentic advertising uses AI-powered agents to autonomously negotiate and execute media buying decisions. Brand agents understand campaign objectives and negotiate with seller agents to find optimal inventory matches. This eliminates manual campaign setup, enables continuous optimization, and delivers better outcomes by matching ads to content themes rather than personal user data.

Today, buyers are stuck between two imperfect options. Option 1: buying in walled gardens like Meta and Google — which offer streamlined experiences but limited control and transparency. Or, option 2: navigating the open web, where they must choose between direct deals that deliver quality but do not scale, or programmatic buying that scales but often sacrifices control and outcomes. Agentic advertising provides a new avenue for brands that combines the best of all worlds. It delivers the streamlined efficiency and intelligence of walled gardens, the quality and transparency of direct relationships, and the scale of programmatic, all while maintaining full control over where ads run and how budgets are spent.

The internet's breaking point — and what comes next

Our CEO Brian O'Kelley recently reflected on his role in building the internet’s ad economy in Fast Company, stating the system we built is breaking down in real time. By 2026, researchers predict 90% of web content will be AI-generated. Quality journalism is disappearing behind paywalls while feeds fill with noise designed purely to capture attention.

He also shared a key truth: the internet has a pattern. It breaks, people panic, and then it gets rebuilt into something better. The difference this time? We have AI not just as the disruptor, but as the tool to rebuild.

For a deeper understanding of why online advertising needs rebuilding, read Brian's full perspective: "I helped build the internet's ad economy. Now I want to save it."

Recognizing the problem is one thing. Building the solution together is another. That's where AdCP enters the picture.

What is AdCP and why does it matter?

AdCP (Ad Context Protocol) is an open, industry-led standard designed to accelerate agentic advertising. Launched with more than 20 companies across the ad ecosystem, AdCP provides the infrastructure layer that enables the next generation of media buying — one where intelligent agents can negotiate, transact, and optimize across the entire ecosystem with unprecedented speed and precision.

This is not just another tech initiative. It's the shared language that allows agents from different platforms to work together seamlessly. We're proud to be a founding member.

AdCP brings three critical elements to the table:

• Interoperability. No more walled gardens. Agents from different platforms can speak the same language, enabling seamless collaboration across the ecosystem.
• Human-in-the-loop safety. Automation does not mean abdication. AdCP ensures humans maintain control over critical decisions while letting agents handle the complexity at scale.
• A shared language. For media buying and signal activation, publishers, agencies, platforms, and brands finally have a common framework to scale smarter, together.

During the launch, the industry witnessed the first-ever agentic media buy over AdCP. Our own Lead Engineer Emma Mulitz partnered with Swivel CEO Joseph Hirsch to demonstrate a buyer agent and seller agent negotiating in real-time, finding optimal outcomes faster than any human-driven process could achieve.

Stay connected with AdCP

• Follow AdCP on LinkedIn for updates and industry insights
• Join the community Slack to connect with other pioneers

What agentic advertising means for brands and publishers

AI has given us an incredible opportunity to transform how advertising works. Imagine taking a campaign brief and bringing it to life instantly — finding the right audiences, activating the right signals, and optimizing performance in real-time without the manual setup and constant intervention that slow everything down today.

For brands and agencies, agentic advertising makes this possible. Brand agents become your always-on media experts, understanding your objectives at a granular level and learning from every campaign. They negotiate better deals, find better placements, and surface insights while you can still act on them. The result is faster execution, better outcomes, and the ability to focus your time on strategy rather than operational tasks.

For publishers, seller agents maximize yield while maintaining full control over inventory quality and pricing floors. They negotiate with countless buyer agents simultaneously, finding optimal matches faster than any human sales team while ensuring every impression is valued appropriately.

For the ecosystem, AdCP provides the shared infrastructure that makes all of this possible—enabling interoperability, transparency, and scale across platforms without proprietary barriers.

The Turning Point

We're at a turning point where we know AI will shape the internet experience — that's inevitable. Now we decide what kind of system we build with it.

The opportunity right now is not just to adopt what gets built, but to actively shape it. The builders, innovators, and early experimenters at the table today are defining how agentic advertising will work for the next decade. They're testing new approaches, contributing ideas, and helping establish the standards that will serve the entire industry.

The rebuild is already underway. The infrastructure is being laid. The first agents are already negotiating media buys. And there's room at the table for more voices, more ideas, and more innovation.

Ready to explore what agentic advertising means for your organization? The Scope3 team is here to help you navigate this transformation, experiment with what's possible, and contribute to building the agentic future together. Let's talk.

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