New Ad Platform Cuts Intermediary Costs for Publishers
Advertisers and publishers can now use AI agents to automate inventory deals, potentially reclaiming 41% in lost fees.
Updated on Oct. 21, 2026 in Advertising
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Optable has introduced its Agentic Marketplace, a platform designed to automate the discovery and purchase of publisher inventory via AI agents. The technology allows media buyers and publishers to transact directly, aiming to bypass standard programmatic fees.
Why it matters
The platform seeks to reduce the 41% of U.S. digital display spending currently absorbed by programmatic fees, allowing more budget to go directly toward working media. By automating negotiations, it aims to retain the customization of direct deals without manual overhead.
Programmatic fees represent 41% of U.S. real-time bidding digital display spending, a significant leakage that Optable aims to reclaim. The platform is entering a market projected to reach $100 million in 2026 and grow to $29.5 billion by 2028.
The players
Optable
A software company focused on data collaboration and clean room infrastructure for the advertising industry.
Goodway Group
A digital marketing services firm that successfully executed a campaign using the Agentic Marketplace technology.
The details
Buyers use the platform to connect agents through a single integration, allowing them to build media plans and submit orders to publishers. Publishers meanwhile package their inventory, audience data, and pricing into products that these agents can discover. Because customers invoice each other directly, Optable does not charge transaction or activation fees for these automated deals.
Timeline
October 8, 2026: Optable unveiled the Agentic Marketplace at the Optable Connect event.
2026: Programmatic fees account for 41% of U.S. digital display spending.
2027: Agentic media buying is projected to reach $3.9 billion.
2028: Agentic media buying is projected to reach $29.5 billion.
Market Landscape
The Agentic Marketplace emerges as a direct counter-strategy to the high cost of programmatic fees in U.S. digital display spending. It marks a significant shift toward automating manual deal-making to reclaim the 41% of capital currently diverted to intermediaries.
Advertisers should evaluate their current programmatic vendor spend and test if agentic platforms can achieve similar campaign execution speeds, which reached 30 minutes in recent trials. Firms should verify if direct publisher integration aligns with their existing media-buying compliance workflows.
The takeaway
The move toward agentic buying reflects a growing industry mandate to strip away middleman friction from digital media deals. Operators should track the growth of this $29.5 billion projected market to identify when these automated tools become standard for their specific publisher partnerships.
Further reading
For more on industry shifts, see Advertising.
Source note: This article includes information reported by AdExchanger.
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