The news: Sell-side ad tech company PubMatic and B2B ad tech provider Optable are moving agentic ad buying from pitch decks to live campaigns. The two companies built an end-to-end workflow inside AgenticOS, PubMatic’s framework that links buyer and seller AI agents, per AdExchanger.

Optable’s agent packages first-party publisher data into audiences matched to a campaign brief. PubMatic’s buyer agent then reads that brief and queries the data in real time, a new function for a company once known strictly as a sell-side platform.

Roughly 30 agentic programmatic campaigns have run through PubMatic so far, and the agent-to-agent Optable integration accounts for about half. That’s a small sample, but the appetite behind it is real given that 66% of US ad buyers plan to spend more time and resources on agentic AI ad buying and campaign execution this year, per the IAB.

Zooming in: The partnerships’ mechanics replace a process that was almost entirely manual until recently.

• Ad ops teams had to find and tag inventory against specific deal IDs, while sales staff pitched curated audiences to buyers one agency at a time, said Charlie Morris, vice president of partnerships and data strategy at Mediavine.
• Mediavine already runs Optable as its data management platform across a network of more than 18,000 publishers, and the integration lets its audience data reach PubMatic’s buyer agent without a matching sales cycle.

Recommendations for advertisers: Agentic tools can now handle the matching and outreach that used to require dedicated headcount, helping smaller publishers and niche networks compete for the same curated demand as major platforms.

• Advertisers should ask publisher and supply-side platform (SSP) partners which agentic supply paths they support. Those with live buyer-agent integrations will get premium access to curated first-party audiences.
• Require performance data, not just platform access. The tool is useless unless the agency proves agent-curated audiences can outperform standard buys.

Dive deeper: For a closer look at the latest trends and developments, read our Agentic Media Buying report.