Understanding the Agentic Protocol Landscape

Overview

As AI agents become more capable, they need standardized ways to communicate with each other and with business systems. The emerging agentic protocol landscape addresses this through two complementary approaches: horizontal middleware that provides foundational agent-to-agent communication, and vertical protocols that enable specific business transactions.

Why Standards Matter

Without open standards, the AI agent ecosystem risks fragmenting into proprietary silos where agents from different vendors cannot interoperate. Open standards enable:

• Interoperability - Agents from different vendors can work together
• Innovation - Developers can build on shared infrastructure rather than reinventing basics
• Trust - Open governance ensures standards evolve for the community's benefit
• Choice - Businesses aren't locked into single vendor ecosystems

The Horizontal/Vertical Framework

The agentic protocol landscape can be understood through two layers:

Horizontal Middleware

Horizontal middleware provides the foundational layer for agent-to-agent communication. It defines how agents discover each other, exchange messages, share context, and coordinate actions - regardless of what specific business domain they operate in.

What AAIF Focuses On

AAIF aims to be "what the W3C is for the Web" - a set of standards and protocols that guarantee interoperability, open access, and freedom of choice. Its focus areas include:

• Agent discovery - How agents find and verify each other
• Message transport - How agents exchange information
• Context sharing - How agents share state and memory
• Tool invocation - How agents call external capabilities
• Reference implementations - Open source code that demonstrates the standards

AAIF focuses on the core infrastructure - the "plumbing" that makes agent communication possible. It intentionally does not focus on domain-specific business logic, which is where vertical protocols come in.

Vertical Transaction Protocols

While horizontal middleware handles agent communication fundamentals, vertical protocols define how agents conduct specific types of business transactions. These protocols build on the foundational layer to enable domain-specific workflows.

Future Vertical Protocols

As the agentic ecosystem matures, additional vertical protocols will likely emerge for other domains such as service management, healthcare coordination, financial transactions, and more. Each will address the specific requirements and regulations of its domain while building on the shared horizontal infrastructure.

Traditional Standards

Agentic protocols don't replace existing industry infrastructure - they build on top of it. Traditional standards continue to provide essential capabilities that the agentic layer leverages.

Complementary, Not Competing

It's important to understand that agentic protocols and traditional standards serve different purposes:

• Traditional standards define how machines exchange data - bid requests, ad markup, measurement signals
• Agentic protocols define how AI agents express intent, discover options, and coordinate decisions

The agentic layer makes it possible for AI assistants to interact with advertising systems using natural language and intelligent workflows. The traditional layer ensures those interactions execute reliably across the existing ecosystem.

Get Involved

The agentic protocol landscape is being built in the open. Whether you're interested in horizontal middleware, vertical protocols for advertising or commerce, or traditional ad tech standards, there are opportunities to participate and shape the future.