Call for agentic collaboration

LLMs & CHATBOTS

Agentic ad standards: Calling all publishers, agencies, tech

On Friday on Linkedin, Optable chief product officer and co-founder Bosko Milekic revealed that his company had been collaborating with ad industry participants on agentic advertising standards inspired by emerging protocols such as Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent2Agent (A2A).

Furthermore, to bring more formality and transparency to the process, Mr. Milekic announced an event to encourage wider participation.

• “Agentic Advertising Standards & Community Launch,” (virtual event) Wednesday, October 15, 11 am. Sign up is here.

“Who should join” includes:

“​Publishers and platforms thinking beyond point solutions

Agencies building intelligent workflows across fragmented supply​

Tech teams exploring LLMs, autonomous agents, or optimization orchestration

Strategic leaders preparing for structural shifts in the media ecosystem”

Scope3 CEO Brian O’Kelley was already promoting the virtual event on LinkedIn over the weekend.

The initiative is at the heart of Optable’s own identity management and data collaboration product strategy.

From tipsheet: Optable will be doing a more company-focused, in-person event in New York City on October 16 titled “Optable Connect ‘25”. Sign up for that one is here.

LLMS & CHATBOTS

Agentic ad standards: Associations & LLMs

Optable co-founder and CPO Bosko Milekic answered two questions via email on Saturday regardnig the standards effort:

tipsheet: Where do you see industry organization like the IAB, ANA or 4As fitting in here with your agentic standards initiative?

Bosko Milekic: …though this is so far an independent open-source effort, we are interested and eager to see engagement from these groups and their members. Our outreach efforts have been principally aimed toward media companies, marketers and agencies that are building marketing and advertising solutions with and on top of Agentic systems (LLMs).

tipsheet: Do you expect that LLM companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic will be a part of this process?

Bosko Milekic: … what we will be sharing sits on top of but is independent of any single commercial LLM or LLM maker.

From tipsheet: Optable is building on MCP themes advocated by other ad tech firms such as LiveRamp and startup Aqfer. How the ‘walled gardens’ react to, or participate in, initiatives such as this will be something to watch. The future viability of the open web may hang in the balance according to some.

LLMs & CHATBOTS

Developments

• xAI releases cheaper, fast language model Grok 4 Fast (September 20)- The Decoder

• OpenAI leads private market surge as 7 tech startups reach combined $1.3 trillion valuation – CNBC

• Mistral’s updated Magistral Small 1.2 reasoning model can analyze images and fit on a Macbook (September 18) – VentureBeat

BRANDS

AI affecting marketing tech and teams

• Navigating the chaos of consent, compliance and customer trust in an AI world” (September 19) – MarTech
• Opinion: Pods, Guilds and AI: The Future of Marketing Team Design (September 19) – CMS Wire

AGENCIES

Meta training agencies

Adweek’s Trishla Ostwal reported that in spite of recent proclamations about the death of the agency due to AI, Meta is looking to penetrate agencies with Advantage+ as a key part of client strategy.

Ostwal wrote about a closed-door Agency Summit by Meta last week in NYC:

“… the message looks markedly different. According to the event agenda, reviewed by ADWEEK, Meta said it was ‘doubling down on our commitment to agencies by focusing on building agency resources and tooling with growth in mind.’ Meta highlighted its existing AI-powered offerings to advertisers—like the Instagram Creator Marketplace and Partnership Ads Hub—and handed out free training vouchers on how to use Meta’s ad tools.”

Read more in Adweek. (September 19)

From tipsheet: Expert training on these AI-enabled ad systems is a business unto itself. Yes, there’s a narrative around “just drop off your ad budget and our automation will do the rest.” But, it’s not that simple yet.

Related: Opinion – The Creator Becomes the Destroyer: How Sorrell’s S4 Gambit Could End the Agency Era He Built – Penri Jones on LinkedIn (September 20)

SELL-SIDE

The new U.S. algorithm: TikTok

On the All-In podcast, panelists discussed the likely acquisition of TikTok by an ownership group led by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and the implications for his son David Ellison (read the BBC), who just acquired Paramount.

Chamath Palihapitiya observed that Ellison’s participation was good from both competitive and transparency points-of-view [56:08]:

“I think there’s two things that are important. The first is that in the future, and this may sound very dystopian, but he who controls the algorithm will control what people think. And if you think about it in that context, you need (…) a marketplace of very different approaches and algorithms that are essentially fighting for mind share.If you don’t have that, you’ll have a massive zombie group think culture. So from that perspective, you have to put TikTok into the hands of a completely different owner than any of these other social media sites so that they are motivated to compete against each other. That’s one.

The second thing is, there’s been a lot that has been said about the TikTok algorithm called ‘Monolith.’ And a bunch of it has been already put out openly, and TikTok was very transparent, and they published a paper.”

Hear more on the Apple Podcasts app. (September 19)

More: Even with a new U.S. TikTok deal in sight, marketers feel uneasy (September 19) – Digiday

SELL-SIDE

IAB Europe: AI adoption, investment traction

In a report released last Thursday, IAB Europe looked AI traction in the continent’s ad industry and saw a fast-moving environment across adoption and investment and an increasing need for governance.

Among the many findings of the report, IAB Europe reviewed how AI-enabled ad tools were being implemented:

“Targeting and content generation topped the list of digital advertising functions currently powered by AI. The results show strong adoption of AI tools for tasks that rely on both generative and predictive models. About 74% of respondents cited at least one function being AI-powered.”

Read the press release. (September 18)

Get the report: Impact Report on the Impact of AI on Digital Advertising (PDF).

TECH

AI is here to: amplify, support

Podcast: “When AI becomes the creative director: Amazon VP Jay Richman on the future of media and ads” (September 20) – Geekwire

• “Richman said the biggest gains from AI will come not from replacing people, but from amplifying the skills of those who are already experts. He compared it to engineering, where AI is turning ‘10x engineers into 100x engineers.’”

Coverage: “Recapping the Marketing Brew Summit 2025 fireside chat with Ali Haeri, SVP of marketing, MNTN” (September 20) – Marketing Brew

• “Remember, AI is here for support, not to replace you or your team. With that in mind, AI can help free up your time so you can focus on more impactful work.”

TECH

Podcast: MCP is coming for DSPs and SSPs

In the most recent episode of their ‘AdTech AdTalk’ podcast titled, “You Down With MCP?,” ad tech executives Adam Heimlich of Chalice AI and Gareth Glaser dug into the weeds of Model Context Protocol’s(MCP) implications.

Mr. Heimlich discussed how Chalice AI’s own internal implementation of Anthropic’s Claude has removed the need to individually login to certain SaaS enterprise plaforms (Jira Confluence, Sharepoint and HubSpot). Claude is now the new hub by bringing together all the information in one place.

He wondered aloud if AI will disintermediate demand-side platforms (DSPs) and sell-side platforms similarly (lightly edited):

“I think this is something that like DSPs and SSPs really need to think hard about because they’ve been hubs in the system and enjoying all the benefits of being a hub.

I think the nature of [the ad tech] ecosystem will be to have bigger, broader hubs. You want the ability to speak to all your DSPs and SSPs, right? You’re not going to want to go to each one to try to get little bits of information.

So the hub and spoke thing is something I see as a positive and and very much on the horizon.”

See ‘AdTech AdTalk’ on YouTube. (September 19)

From tipsheet: The theme of what Mr. Heimlich is saying also syncs with how ad tech firms like Magnite and The Trade Desk appear to be increasingly reaching across both buy and sell-sides with products and services.

TECH

Gemini app ascending courtesy of images AI

“Google Gemini began ascending the Top Downloaded ranks in the US App Store when Nano Banana was released. It has been the #1 Top Downloaded app for the last several days.”

From tipsheet: Nano Banana is an image editing AI model with the Gemini app from Google’s DeepMind. Read more from Google on August 25.

Related: “I just realized it’s the 21st day of September and the Google Ad Tech antitrust remedies trial starts tomorrow. I don’t believe in coincidences!” (September 21) – Terence Kawaja, LUMA Partners on LinkedIn

PROMPT

How will publishers orchestrate agents using AI in 5 years?

Response from Anthropic’s Claude:

Looking ahead to 2030, publishers will likely orchestrate AI agents across several key areas:

• Content Creation & Management
• Personalized Reader Experience
• Revenue & Business Operations
• Multi-Platform Publishing
• Quality Control & Legal Compliance

Read more on tipsheet.

MORE

• How Amazon Built The World’s Fastest Growing Ad Business – Part 1 (September 19) – Mike Shields in the “Big Technology” newsletter (subscription)
• Mad Men GPT: AI creative studios are drawing investors and consumer eyeballs (September 19) – Semafor
• Markup AI Secures $27.5 Million to Launch the Industry’s First Content Guardian Agents (September 19) – press release
• Will I get a piece of Anthropic’s $1.5B settlement if my book was used to train AI? – Geekwire
• Hard Drives Are Making an AI Comeback. Yes, Hard Drives. (September 19) – The Wall Street Journal