"Yes, everyone seems to have an opinion on Agentic AI. But if the main thing you're feeling right now is confusion, you're in excellent company. Index Exchange CEO Andrew Casale said it out loud: we're in a 'soup of confusion'; an agentic one. And it's not hard to see why. Just look at the number of protocols that emerged over the past several months."
"Different names, different origins, but all circling the same unresolved question: what does agentic actually mean? Beyond the alphabet soup, there are still big, unanswered questions. About definitions. About scale. About adoption. About whether "agentic" is just advanced automation or whether it's genuinely pointing toward an open system where buyer agents can access inventory and data anywhere, and seller agents are ubiquitous, interoperable, and easy to call."
Agentic AI became the dominant theme at CES 2026 and has quickly taken over ad tech conversation. Multiple protocols have emerged recently — AdCP, ARTF, UCP, MCP, and A2A — reflecting varied approaches and stakeholders. Key uncertainties include what "agentic" truly means, how systems will scale, how adoption will proceed, and whether agentic denotes advanced automation or an open, interoperable ecosystem with buyer and seller agents accessing inventory and data broadly. The proliferation of protocols risks increasing complexity even as agentic promises simplification. Two competing narratives have formed: build from scratch versus layer agentic capabilities onto existing infrastructure.
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