Brussels, Belgium, 9th January 2026 – IAB Europe welcomes the announcement by IAB Tech Lab of its Agentic Roadmap for Digital Advertising, unveiled on 6th January 2026.
As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded across the digital advertising value chain, shared frameworks that support interoperability, transparency, and responsible innovation will be indispensable. The Tech Lab initiative reflects growing industry interest in enabling more intelligent, automated interactions across buying, selling, and measurement environments, while maintaining trust, accountability, and choice.
IAB Europe has long supported the development of open, collaborative standards that help the market evolve in a way that works for advertisers, publishers, technology providers, and users alike. The industry already benefits from a strong foundation of shared, globally adopted standards. Initiatives that explore how agent-based systems can operate within a standards-based ecosystem build on this foundation. They provide a pragmatic and sustainable space for experimentation and learning for the industry, while strengthening the ecosystem through existing infrastructure.
As agent-enabled approaches develop, ensuring that advertiser and publisher intent can be expressed clearly and interpreted consistently across the open internet will remain a critical foundation for scalable, trustworthy automation.
“We see agentic technologies as part of a broader evolution in digital advertising”, said Townsend Feehan, IAB Europe CEO. “What matters most is that innovation continues to be guided by openness, interoperability, and respect for existing market structures and regulatory expectations - which latter will be conditioned by Europe’s AI Act and implementing measures. Constructive dialogue and coordination across initiatives will be key.”
IAB Europe looks forward to continued engagement with Tech Lab and the wider ecosystem as these discussions progress, and to contributing European market perspectives to the ongoing exploration of agentic workflows.
About IAB Europe
IAB Europe is the European-level association for the digital marketing and advertising ecosystem. Through its membership of national IABs and media, technology and marketing companies, its mission is to lead political representation and promote industry collaboration to deliver frameworks, standards and industry programmes that enable businesses to thrive in the European market
