Draft Digital’s buying agent and Mediahuis’ selling agent transact directly with each other via AdCP.
Draft Digital is running the first agent-to-agent campaign at Mediahuis without a programmatic intermediary. The buying process takes place entirely through the AdCP protocol (Ad Context Protocol): Draft Digital’s buying agent and Mediahuis’ selling agent transact directly with each other. Draft Digital uses this route for various advertisers, with Apostra acting as the integrator connecting Draft Digital’s own buying agent to publishers’ sales agents. The first campaign has been live since 18 September 2026.
In a traditional programmatic buying process, a significant portion of every media euro is spent on technical intermediaries: demand-side platforms, supply-side platforms, exchanges and verification. This adtech tax reduces the share of the budget that ultimately reaches the consumer. Draft Digital wanted to shorten this chain for its advertisers and ensure that more of the budget is spent on visible media.
Draft Digital therefore set up Direct Agent-to-Agent buying via the AdCP protocol, the open standard for agentic advertising. Draft Digital’s buying agent transacts directly with Mediahuis’ selling agent through Apostra. The two agents align on inventory, pricing and targeting directly, without programmatic curation or any other intermediary. For Mediahuis, this is the first agent-to-agent campaign in which the agents transact fully and directly with each other. As a publisher, Mediahuis brings significant scale, allowing the direct approach to be deployed at volume from the outset.
- Direct Agent-to-Agent gives advertisers a shorter and more transparent route to our titles. Without an intermediary, we know exactly who is buying and under what conditions. That makes the collaboration simpler for both sides. Together with Draft Digital, we are demonstrating that it works at scale. In just a few weeks, we have learned a great deal about how to describe, price and manage inventory. Those lessons are at least as valuable to us as the campaign itself. The protocol is still young, and publishers that help build it now will have a say in what agentic buying looks like in the future, says TinYee Tang, Programmatic Demand Manager at Mediahuis.
By removing intermediaries, a larger share of the budget goes towards working media: the portion that is actually delivered as media instead of being spent on technology. According to the ANA (Association of National Advertisers), around half of an average programmatic media budget reaches consumers as working media, while the rest is absorbed by the supply chain.
- Agentic buying is no longer an experiment. Together with a publisher like Mediahuis, we are showing that agents can transact directly with each other, without an intermediary consuming part of the budget. That means more working media for advertisers and greater control for publishers. Together, we are setting the new standard, says Lars Postmus, co-founder of Draft Digital.
What the first setup taught us
The most important lesson is as simple as it is fundamental: an agent can only sell what has been clearly defined. This also became evident in practice, as the first campaign via Draft Digital was not without its challenges. It starts with the setup of your
