WPP Media has announced the development of a Buyer Agent for Video as part of a new Agentic Standards Initiative, bringing together premium media owners, technology platforms, and industry standards bodies to establish a common framework for how buyer and seller agents interact safely, transparently, and at scale across TV and video advertising.
The initiative reflects the industry’s growing focus on agentic AI, which is expected to transform how media decisions are made across planning, activation, optimisation, measurement, and reconciliation. While several companies have begun introducing AI-powered agents for advertising workflows, WPP Media believes the future of agentic media requires shared standards and governance models that support interoperability across the ecosystem.
As part of the initiative, WPP Media is developing a Buyer Agent for Video within WPP Open, its agentic marketing platform. The Buyer Agent will operate through WPP’s Agentic Activation Orchestration Layer, which coordinates interactions between people, AI agents, data, tools, approval systems, and partner platforms.
The initial focus will be on linear TV, connected TV (CTV), and premium video environments, where high-value transactions and complex workflows make governance, transparency, and trust critical. Insights from the initiative are expected to inform WPP Media’s future approach across additional media channels.
The Agentic Standards Initiative seeks to establish common technical, workflow, and governance standards for agent-to-agent communication, helping the industry avoid fragmentation caused by proprietary integrations and inconsistent operating models.
To support this effort, WPP Media is collaborating with industry partners including Comcast Advertising and FreeWheel, Disney Advertising, Fox Advertising, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount, as well as standards organisations including IAB Tech Lab and Prebid.org.
The collaboration will focus on defining how buyer and seller agents communicate, validate decisions, support media transaction workflows, and manage approvals and escalations.
Areas of early alignment include audience discovery, inventory evaluation, planning recommendations, proposal and approval workflows, private marketplaces, programmatic guaranteed transactions, campaign activation, pacing and optimisation, measurement, reconciliation, compliance checks, and auditability.
The initiative also addresses emerging risks associated with agentic media, including access to sensitive audience strategies, pricing models, campaign parameters, optimisation signals, and client-specific business rules. Shared governance standards are being developed to ensure transparency, accountability, approval controls, and human oversight for high-impact decisions.
The effort builds on WPP Open’s existing governance framework, which includes workspace isolation, client data protection controls, role-based access permissions, monitoring systems, and verification processes.
For advertisers, WPP Media believes the initiative will create a more efficient and secure ecosystem by enabling faster access to premium inventory, improved activation intelligence, reduced marketplace fragmentation, stronger financial controls, transparent decision-making, and safer adoption of AI-powered buying workflows.
The company emphasised that its long-term vision is one where AI agents augment human expertise rather than replace it, enabling smarter and more accountable media investment decisions.
Commenting on the initiative, Brian Lesser, CEO of WPP Media, said: “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.”
James Rooke, President of Comcast Advertising, added: “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.”
Jamie Power, Senior Vice President, Addressable Sales at Disney Advertising, said: “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.”
Jeff Collins, President, Advertising Sales, Marketing and Brand Partnerships at Fox Corporation, commented: “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.”
Travis Scoles, EVP, Advanced Advertising at Paramount, said: “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.”
Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab, added: “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.”
Mike Racic, President of Prebid.org, said: “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.”
Initial testing with participating partners is already underway. WPP Media expects the programme to progress from alpha and beta testing toward supporting large-scale TV and video investments within the next six to nine months. The company plans to share technical learnings, reference workflows, and proposed standards with the wider industry in early 2027.
