AdCP Ecosystem Integration

The Ad Context Protocol defines multiple agent types that work together in AI-driven advertising workflows. This page describes how the Prebid Sales Agent (Publisher role) interacts with buying agents, signal agents, creative agents, governance agents, and orchestration platforms.

Agent Interaction Model

                    ┌─────────────────────┐
                    │  Orchestration       │
                    │  Platform            │
                    └──────────┬──────────┘
                               │ A2A
          ┌────────────────────┼────────────────────┐
          │                    │                     │
┌─────────▼─────────┐  ┌──────▼──────────┐  ┌──────▼──────────┐
│  Signal Agent      │  │  Buying Agent   │  │  Creative Agent  │
│  (audiences)       │  │  (media buys)   │  │  (assets)        │
└─────────┬─────────┘  └──────┬──────────┘  └──────┬──────────┘
          │                    │ MCP / A2A           │
          │            ┌───────▼───────┐             │
          └───────────▶│  Sales Agent  │◀────────────┘
                       │  (Publisher)  │
                       └───────┬───────┘
                               │
                       ┌───────▼───────┐
                       │  Ad Server    │
                       │  (GAM, etc.)  │
                       └───────────────┘

Buying Agents

Buying agents discover inventory and execute media buys on behalf of advertisers. This is the primary interaction pattern for the Sales Agent.

Interaction flow:

  1. get_adcp_capabilities – Discover what the Sales Agent supports
  2. get_products – Search inventory with a natural language brief
  3. list_creative_formats – Check format requirements
  4. create_media_buy – Submit a campaign
  5. sync_creatives – Upload creative assets
  6. get_media_buy_delivery – Monitor performance

Buying agents connect via MCP (for direct AI assistant integration) or A2A (for multi-agent workflows). Both protocols expose identical tool functionality.

For a step-by-step integration guide, see Buy-Side Integration.

Signal Agents

Signal agents provide audience data and contextual signals that enrich product discovery and targeting.

How signals interact with the Sales Agent:

  • Audience signals are passed as targeting parameters in get_products and create_media_buy
  • The Sales Agent’s AI-powered product search (via Gemini) uses these signals to improve matching
  • Signal data does not flow through the Sales Agent directly – buying agents aggregate signals before making requests

See the Signals Protocol for the signal data specification.

Creative Agents

Creative agents generate, optimize, and manage advertising assets. They interact with the Sales Agent through format negotiation and creative delivery.

Integration points:

  • list_creative_formats – Creative agents query format specifications (dimensions, file types, asset requirements) to generate compliant assets
  • sync_creatives – Deliver generated assets to the Sales Agent for trafficking to the ad server
  • list_creatives – Check the status of uploaded creatives (pending review, approved, rejected)

The Sales Agent validates creative assets against format specifications before forwarding them to the ad server adapter.

See the Creative Protocol and Creative Formats for format specifications and manifest structure.

Governance Agents

Governance agents enforce content policies, brand safety rules, and property authorization across the advertising ecosystem.

Integration points:

  • get_adcp_capabilities – Returns content policy information when available
  • create_media_buy – Brand manifest validation against publisher content standards
  • Content standards tools (planned) – get_content_standards, create_content_standards, update_content_standards, list_content_standards

Content standards tools are defined in the AdCP specification but not yet implemented in the Prebid Sales Agent. See Content Standards Tools for status.

See the Governance Protocol for content governance specifications.

Orchestration Platforms

Orchestration platforms coordinate multi-agent workflows across multiple sales agents. They use the A2A protocol for agent-to-agent communication.

How orchestration works:

  1. The orchestrator discovers sales agents via /.well-known/agent.json
  2. It queries multiple sales agents’ capabilities and inventory
  3. It coordinates buying decisions across publishers
  4. It manages the lifecycle of media buys across agents

A2A discovery: The Sales Agent publishes an agent card at /.well-known/agent.json containing its identity, supported protocols, available tools, and authentication requirements. Orchestrators use this for automated discovery.

See the Sponsored Intelligence documentation for orchestration patterns.

Brand Protocol

The Brand Protocol defines how advertiser identity and brand safety information flow through the AdCP ecosystem.

How it works with the Sales Agent:

  • Buying agents include a BrandManifest in create_media_buy requests
  • The manifest contains brand name, URL, logo, and category
  • The Sales Agent uses this for compliance checks against publisher content standards
  • Ad server adapters may use brand data for order naming and trafficking

See the Brand Protocol / brand.json specification.

Further Reading