IAB Tech Lab Releases AAMP 3.0 to Bring Common Standards to Agentic Media Buying

IAB Tech Lab, the global digital advertising technical standards body, announced on September 22, 2026 the release of AAMP 3.0, the next major version of its Agentic Advertising Management Protocols framework. The release centres on a new specification called OpenProposal, which defines a standardized, agent-readable format for moving from a buyer's RFP through proposal evaluation to a buy commitment in agentic advertising workflows.

According to IAB Tech Lab, the segment of the media buying process between an RFP and a buy commitment has historically relied on manual, human-driven workflows. As AI agents take on greater responsibility for discovering, evaluating, and planning media, the organization said that gap creates a need for a common exchange format between buyer and seller agents before a transaction proceeds to execution.

OpenProposal addresses that need by giving publishers a standardized way to represent advertising products and packages in a form that buying agents can read and evaluate. IAB Tech Lab said the specification enables buying agents to compare opportunities across a broader set of publishers than would be practical through manual evaluation, while giving sellers control over how their inventory is represented.

Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab, described the new specification as filling a gap in the existing standards landscape. "OpenProposal fills a major gap between a buyer's brief and a buy commitment, giving buyer and seller agents a standardized way to exchange and evaluate opportunities," Katsur said. "By connecting that process to the standards the industry already uses for execution, AAMP 3.0 creates a foundation for agentic workflows across the media buying lifecycle."

IAB Tech Lab said OpenProposal connects to existing standards already used across media execution, including AdCOM, OpenDirect, and the Deals API, and is designed to allow existing programmatic implementations to continue operating without requiring DSPs, SSPs, or other technologies to change their current use cases.

AAMP 3.0 also includes updates to the AAMP agent software development kits (SDKs), which IAB Tech Lab said continue to harden deterministic guardrails governing pricing, ad packages, orders, and media buy details, increase trust in agent identities, and strengthen idempotency across transactions. The organization described idempotency in practical terms as meaning "an instruction can be sent twice without happening twice."

The specification outlines a media lifecycle covering seven stages: Publish, Discover, Compare, Qualify, Negotiate, Bind & Execute, and Report. IAB Tech Lab said AdCOM provides a common vocabulary throughout these stages so that information represented at discovery remains consistent as an opportunity moves through planning, negotiation, execution, and reporting.

Industry participants voiced support for the new framework. Michael Palmer, Global Vice President of Emerging Technologies at WPP Media, said AAMP 3.0 "delivers a transaction-ready framework that will aid our industry's movement from proof-of-concept tests towards the wide-spread use of AI Agents in media transactions." Mike Treon, Head of CTV Strategy at PMG, said the key advance is that "the reasoning travels with the proposal," allowing a seller to convey not just pricing but the audience rationale and terms behind a package in a machine-readable form.

IAB Australia also indicated active involvement. Jonas Jaanimagi, Technology Lead at IAB Australia, said the organization "has opened expressions of interest for a seller-side pilot using the AAMP reference implementations available today" and described its role as helping Australian publishers test discovery, proposal, and approval workflows in a sandbox before any live spend is involved.

The OpenProposal specification is open for public comment until October 22, 2026, during which time IAB Tech Lab said it will be built into the Buyer and Seller Agent SDK reference implementations. Technical resources and the public comment process are available at iabtechlab.com/AAMPv3.