Multiple frameworks around agentic advertising have emerged, defining the roles of agents in digital advertising. The industry has landed on three types of agents: buyer/buying agents for the buy side, sales/selling/seller agents for the sell side and specialist agents.
In this guide, we will dive into creative agents, the specialists responsible for generating and adapting ad assets across formats and specs.
The Creative Production Process is Broken
Traditional creative production is bogged down by lengthy approval cycles – from brief to design to stakeholder approval to delays between each revision. Each bottleneck is multiplied further when you throw in the technical complexity of interactive formats like HTML5, and the growing demand for dynamic, audience-specific personalization where Dynamic Creative Optimisation (DCO) is often looked to as a solution. A creative agent is a structural answer to this constraint.
We are narrowing the definition of a “creative agent” to its function as a protocol role, as outlined in the Ad Context Protocol (AdCP). You will see the AdCP referenced frequently here, as it represents the industry’s most concerted effort to standardize how creative production and delivery are orchestrated agentically. As a founding member, Adzymic plays a role in shaping these protocols globally.
The Definition of a Creative Agent isn’t Always Clear
Just as there is no industry consensus around what agentic advertising actually means, your understanding of a “creative agent” – depending on your role, or what your LinkedIn algorithm feeds you – may very well differ from your colleague sitting across from you. In 2026 alone, two major companies in distinct domains – Adobe, the digital media software leader, and Luma Labs, a San Francisco-based generative AI company – have each launched their own creative agents.
You would notice that both operate as platform-bound tools. Some AI simply acts as a copilot inside a platform. Knowing the difference matters because "agentic" has become a marketing label as much as a technical one – a platform can market itself as agentic while the same legacy infrastructure runs underneath.
This article narrows the definition of a “creative agent” to its function as a protocol role, under the Ad Context Protocol (AdCP). To understand the “creative agent” in the context of agentic advertising, view it through the following lenses:
- Think ad servers, not generative image tools: The output isn’t limited to static images or videos. Instead, we’re looking at ad tags as the final output – ready for campaign trafficking via ad servers such as DV360, The Trade Desk, and others.
- Think advertising templates, not one-time image or video generation: We’re not just going from prompt to single dimensional output. In the world of interactive display, this means generating interactive HTML5 display templates, VAST/VPAID video standards, and rich media like carousels, scratch-to-reveal mechanisms, in-banner video, and more – all ready for deployment.
- Think campaign lifecycle, not just creative production: A creative agent doesn’t stop at producing ad creative; it simultaneously acts as a bridge within the agentic ecosystem, communicating with other agents (e.g. buyer and seller agents) to coordinate, and execute a campaign end-to-end.
Why AdCP, specifically? AdCP brings together industry players across SSPs, DSPs, publishers, agencies and ad tech platforms to govern and standardize how agentic advertising is done, just like how OpenRTB was formalised by IAB Tech Lab. As a founding member, Adzymic plays a role in shaping these protocols globally.
AdCP Creative Agents: Serving Both Demand and Supply Sides
With a seller or buyer agent, it’s clear which side of the ecosystem each agent serves. Creative agents, on the other hand, serve both the buy and sell side – albeit with distinct functions.
Imagine a print shop. A customer walks in wanting a roller banner for their next trade show. The customer is the human strategist, or the principal in an AI interaction.
Just hours before that, a designer from the customer’s company has taken the brief: “we need something bold and on-brand, I’m guessing it will be 3-metre tall”. This is the creative agent on the buy side. The creative agent creates.
On the print shop’s production desk, the specifications go beyond “3-metre tall”. The print shop’s production team specifies: 1,500mm by 2,000mm. Minimum 300dpi. CMYK colour profile. Bleed on all sides.
They check the artwork against those requirements, flag what doesn’t fit, and produce a proof before anything goes to print. The production team is the creative agent on the sell side: it doesn’t produce creative, but validates what to produce.
In our analogy:
- the customer represents the human strategist or the principal,
- the designer represents the creative agent on the buy side – generating creative for the principal, and;
- the production desk at the print shop represents the creative agent on the sell side – validating the right creative formats and specifications.
Access to Creative Agents: Two Commercial Models
In short: an agent needs a home. An agent has to run somewhere, be configured by someone, and be accountable to someone when things go wrong. A big holding group or large brand could build and host their own creative agent – one that sits inside their own tech stack and manages their creative library centrally. But most advertisers or publishers don't build their own, simply because they’re not in the business of building tech infrastructure. Instead, they use managed services or platforms like Adzymic.
Our agentic suite, AgenX, acts as the operator, while the advertiser or publisher stays as the principal. Through our managed services or Agent-as-a-service subscription, AgenX is akin to a polyglot that speaks the same language as every advertiser and publisher in the agentic ecosystem. Today, two modes of delivery are available:
- Managed services: This is for brands or advertisers who want an integrated solution, more so the access to the omnichannel premium inventory that Adzymic provides. Iterations and prototyping with the creative agent is one benefit that you will receive as part of our services.
- Agent-as-a-service: This means that you pay a monthly fee to use the AgenX Creative Agent, with you as the principal, and Adzymic as the operator, configuring the guardrails around the agents (this isn’t limited to just creative agent – there’s also buyer or seller agents). This is for clients with mature, in-house programmatic capabilities.
What An AdCP Creative Agent is Capable of
At its core, a creative agent is capable of performing the following (the corresponding specification is shown, for our technically adept audience):
- Generate creatives automatically from natural language briefs (build_creative)
- Show ad previews to advertisers before they go live
- Validate a publisher's supported formats and selecting suitable formats for advertisers (get_adcp_capabilities → creative.supported_formats)
- Push assets (images, video, product feeds) to ad servers for rendering (sync_creatives)
- Pull delivery reports programmatically (get_creative_delivery)
On the sell side, the creative agent can perform these on behalf of a media owner or publisher:
- Declare accepted formats so buyers know exactly what to send (get_products, get_adcp_capabilities)
- Validate incoming creatives against your specs automatically (validate_content_delivery against a declared capability_id)
- Receive and store buyer-pushed assets (sync_creative, requires declaring has_creative_library: true)
- List creative inventory for buyers to discover and select (list_creatives, requires declaring has_creative_library: true)
The end result: the entire creative workflow – from brief to delivery report – can run agent-to-agent, without human coordination at each handoff.
- For advertisers, this means faster campaign launches and less manual work – no more back-and-forth with the publisher's trafficking team.
- For publishers, this translates to less time wasted on creative operations as incoming creatives are validated automatically against your specs, and an easier path for buyers to work with you – both of which mean faster monetisation.
Notice how we listed the protocol operations – build_creative, sync_creatives, etc. In layman terms, these are the common tasks that any compatible AI agent is designed to carry out. Industry players have come together through working groups and industry councils to decide on common tasks that agents should undertake. For the non-technical audience, the takeaway is this: having a common language allows agents from anywhere in the world to communicate with one another.
If you would like to dive into the world of agentic advertising, read this article where we covered key concepts around agentic advertising including protocol operations and interoperability.
How to Get Started with Creative Agents
Creative agents promise to move the industry away from manual, fragmented coordination, and towards fully automated, agentic workflows.
If you are a media planner, digital director, or agency lead: The right starting point is understanding what a creative agent can do for your creative workflow. The Creative Agent and Buyer Agent within AgenX are designed for advertisers like yourself.
If you want to go deeper on AdCP creative agent: The protocol documentation is freely available at agenticadvertising.org. It is written for builders, but the overview sections are accessible to anyone who wants to understand what the standard actually specifies.