WPP Media has revealed an Agentic Standards Initiative for Video Buying in collaboration with premium media owners, technology platforms, and industry standards bodies to co-develop shared standards for agentic video buying.
As part of the initiative, WPP Media is developing a Buyer Agent for Video within WPP Open, WPP’s agentic marketing platform. The initiative will initially focus on linear TV, connected TV and premium video, where high-value investment and complex transaction workflows make trust, governance and interoperability essential.
Participating partners include Comcast Advertising and its global adtech platform FreeWheel, Disney Advertising, Fox Advertising, NBCUniversal, Netflix and Paramount as well as standards bodies IAB Tech Lab and Prebid.org.
WPP Media and participating partners will inform, test,and refine the technical, workflow and governance standards for how buyer and seller agents communicate, validate, support approved media transaction workflows, and escalate decisions.
Brands and advertisers will benefit from the initiative through:
- Faster and more consistent access to premium TV and video opportunities,
- Better application of Open Intelligence in activation,
- Reduced fragmentation across broadcasters, platforms, and partners,
- Stronger financial and data controls,
- Transparent decisioning and audit trails, and
- Safer testing and scaling of agentic buying.
The WPP Media Buyer Agent for Video will operate as part of an Agentic Activation Orchestration Layer within WPP Open, which coordinates how WPP Media’s human decision makers, agents, data, tools, approval controls and partner systems interact.
Media owners and platforms will continue to operate their own Seller Agents and orchestration layers, making common technical, workflow, and governance standards essential for agentic buying to scale.
“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,” said Brian Lesser, CEO, WPP Media.
Lesser added, “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.”
Across the advertising ecosystem, companies are announcing agents designed to automate parts of buying and selling. But for agentic buying and selling to work at scale, media buyers and sellers need common standards for how their agents communicate, validate, and execute approved decisions.
Without common standards, the industry risks significant increases in fragmentation and complexity, including bespoke integrations between every buyer and seller, inconsistent agent-to-agent interpretation, exposure of client strategy, opaque decisioning, and insufficient controls around live campaign activation.
“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” said James Rooke, President, Comcast Advertising.
Rooke added, “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.”
“The future of media buying isn’t just automated – it’s intelligent, interoperable, and outcome-driven,” said Jamie Power, Senior Vice President, Addressable Sales, Disney Advertising. “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.”
“We’re pleased to partner with Brian and his team at WPP Media to help advance industry standards for agentic media buying,” said Jeff Collins, President, Advertising Sales, Marketing and Brand Partnerships, Fox Corporation. “Establishing a shared framework for transparency, interoperability, and governance will be key to scaling innovation across premium video.”
“Paramount’s continued and increasing investment in driving innovation extends through our partners,” said Travis Scoles, EVP, Advanced Advertising, Paramount. “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.”
“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,” said Anthony Katsur, CEO at IAB Tech Lab. “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.”
“As agentic technologies reshape digital advertising, the industry has a unique opportunity to build a more transparent, interoperable, and efficient ecosystem,” said Mike Racic, President, Prebid.org. “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.”
WPP Media’s Agentic Standards Initiative is designed to reduce these risks through common workflows, validation steps, auditability, transparency, and clear separation between probabilistic recommendations and deterministic execution. High-impact financial or activation decisions will require explicit controls, approval thresholds, and accountable human oversight.
The initiative builds on WPP’s existing AI governance principles, including workspace isolation, no training on client data without explicit permission, PII restrictions by default, role-based access controls, continuous monitoring, and Safe & Capable verification. The Buyer Agent for Video will also be informed by Open Intelligence, WPP’s foundational intelligence layer, to help clients apply richer intelligence in activation.
Initial testing between WPP Media and partners has already begun, with the goal of moving from alpha and beta tests to a model capable of supporting large-scale TV and video investment over the next 6–9 months. WPP Media expects to share findings, reference workflows, technical learnings, and proposed standards for broader industry use in early 2027.
The initiative continues WPP’s leadership in applying data, technology, and automation to media investment — from the creation and launch of Xaxis at the birth of programmatic to the development of trusted standards for the agentic era, making media decisions more intelligent, transparent, and interoperable.
