S2: Creative mastery

AdCP specialist module S2: Creative mastery. Format taxonomy across 20 channels, creative manifest spec, AI generation, compliance checks, and asset sync workflows.

S2: Creative mastery

Members only — Requires Practitioner credential. ~45 minutes with Addie. Combines hands-on lab and adaptive exam.

This specialist module tests your mastery of the creative protocol. You’ll work with sandbox agents to discover format requirements across channels, produce and adapt creative assets, sync them to publishers, and verify compliance. Addie evaluates both your hands-on work and your conceptual understanding.

Passing earns the AdCP specialist — Creative credential.

Specialisms this track prepares you to validate

The following specialisms fall under the creative domain. Each has its own compliance storyboard — see the Compliance Catalog for the full taxonomy.

Specialism	Status	What it covers
creative-ad-server	stable	Creative ad server with tag-based delivery
creative-generative	stable	Generative creative agent producing assets on demand
creative-template	stable	Creative template and transformation agent

What you’ll demonstrate

• Identify the three creative agent interaction models and explain when each applies
• Work with stateless agents (template/transformers): discover formats, preview with inline assets, build serving tags
• Work with stateful ad servers: browse a creative library, generate tags per media buy, track delivery
• Work with stateful sales agents: push creatives, preview in the publisher’s environment
• Adapt a single creative concept across multiple channels and formats
• Author against AdCP canonical formats: read format_options[], choose the right format_kind, map asset_source, and explain how a product narrows the canonical contract
• Use preview_creative in all three request modes — single, batch (5–10× faster for many creatives), and variant (retrieve historical renders from get_creative_delivery) — and choose output_format: "html" when bypassing the iframe speeds rendering
• Understand creative agent pricing: the pricing_options[] array on discovery responses, how pricing_option_id flows through build_creative and report_usage, and why CPM ad servers show zero vendor_cost at build time while transformation agents do not
• Reason about tracker-slot presence — a format supports third-party measurement only if its assets array declares a tracker slot (e.g., impression_tracker). Broadcast formats intentionally omit tracker slots; measurement comes from panel and STB data via billing_measurement
• Attach industry_identifiers[] to broadcast manifests with the correct creative-identifier-type (ad_id, isci, clearcast_clock), and give each cut (:15 vs :30) its own Ad-ID
• Reason about format edge cases, accessibility, and provenance

Prerequisite reading

Core creative tasks

list_creative_formats

Format discovery: what specs does each publisher require?

build_creative

Creative generation and transformation from brand assets.

preview_creative

Preview creatives before deployment.

sync_creatives

Synchronize creative assets with publisher platforms.

Supporting concepts

Creative protocol overview

The creative protocol: assets, formats, manifests, and creative agents.

Creative specification

Formal specification for the creative protocol.

Formats reference

Format definitions, technical specs, and the renders structure.

Canonical formats

AdCP-defined format archetypes, product-level format_options[], and asset-source taxonomy.

Asset types

Images, video, audio, HTML5, and native asset specifications.

Creative manifests

Manifest structure: how creative packages describe their contents.

Channel guides

Channel-specific specs for video, display, audio, DOOH, and carousels.

Broadcast TV

Broadcast formats, industry_identifiers[] (ad_id, isci, clearcast_clock), Ad-ID integration, and why broadcast formats omit tracker slots.

Generative creative

AI-generated creative workflows and best practices.

Accessibility

Accessibility standards for advertising creatives.

Provenance

AI creative provenance and disclosure requirements.

Implementing creative agents

Architecture guide for building creative agents.

Creative governance

Creative governance

Feature-based creative evaluation: security scanning, regulatory compliance, and content categorization.

get_creative_features

The evaluation task that scores creatives against governance features.

Content standards

Buyer-defined content rules that constrain what creatives can contain.

Provenance verification

How governance agents verify AI creative provenance metadata.

Connecting to the test agent

Lab exercises run against the public test agent. Use the shared token — no signup required. The creative module spans three agent surfaces; start with the ad server (the most common path) and switch URLs when an exercise calls for a different agent type.

export ADCP_AUTH_TOKEN="1v8tAhASaUYYp4odoQ1PnMpdqNaMiTrCRqYo9OJp6IQ"
export AGENT_URL="https://test-agent.adcontextprotocol.org/creative/mcp"

Agent surface	URL	Used in
Creative ad server	https://test-agent.adcontextprotocol.org/creative/mcp	Exercises 2, 4
Stateless transformation / template agent	https://test-agent.adcontextprotocol.org/creative-builder/mcp	Exercises 1, 5
Sales agent (push-and-preview)	https://test-agent.adcontextprotocol.org/sales/mcp	Exercises 3, 6

See the Quickstart for a walkthrough of your first call.

Canonical-format glossary

Term	Definition
Canonical format	An AdCP-defined creative archetype such as image, video_hosted, or native_in_feed. Buyers validate the creative manifest against the canonical first.
format_kind	The discriminator that names which canonical applies to a product format option. It controls creative shape, not delivery channel or targeting.
format_options[]	Product-level declarations that narrow canonicals with sizes, slots, production source, and platform constraints. A product can offer one option or several alternatives.
format_option_id	Stable identifier for a product or publisher-catalog option. Select it when the product publishes one; do not substitute creative-agent capability IDs in media-buy products or creative manifests.
v1_format_ref[]	Legacy creative-format references attached to a canonical option. One option can point to one existing format or fan out to several size-specific formats.
capability_id	Creative-agent build capability selector on creative.supported_formats. It chooses a build_creative path and is separate from product-level format_option_id.
asset_source	Declares who renders the asset bytes for image, video_hosted, and audio_hosted: buyer_uploaded, publisher_host_recorded, seller_pre_rendered_from_brief, seller_human_designed, or agent_synthesized.
Manifest asset map	The slot-by-slot mapping from the selected format option’s requirements to the creative manifest assets, including which inputs the buyer provides and which assets are seller-, publisher-, or agent-produced.

Lab exercises

Interaction models

1. Stateless transformation — Connect to a template agent, discover its formats, preview a template with sample brand assets (inline), and build a serving tag. No sync_creatives — everything is passed in the call.
2. Ad server workflow — Connect to a pre-loaded ad server, browse the creative library with list_creatives, generate tags for multiple media buys using build_creative, and check delivery metrics.
3. Push-and-preview — Connect to a sales agent, discover its accepted formats, push catalog assets with sync_creatives, and preview how they render in the publisher’s environment.

Creative pricing

4. Pricing lifecycle — Using the same sandbox ad server from exercise 2:

   • Establish an account with the ad server
   • list_creatives with account and include_pricing: true — observe pricing_options on each creative reflecting your rate card
   • Switch to a second sandbox account, list_creatives again — observe that pricing_options reflects a different rate (different CPM, model, or currency)
   • build_creative with account — examine pricing_option_id, vendor_cost, and consumption in the response
   • build_creative without account — observe the rejection error
   • Call report_usage with creative_id + pricing_option_id, verify the values match what build_creative returned
   • Explain: why is vendor_cost zero on a CPM-priced creative at build time?

5. Transformation agent pricing — Using the sandbox transformation agent from exercise 1, with pricing enabled:

   • Establish an account with the transformation agent
   • list_creative_formats with account and include_pricing: true — observe pricing_options on each format (per-unit pricing)
   • build_creative with account — examine pricing_option_id, vendor_cost, and consumption (expect non-zero vendor_cost at build time, unlike the CPM ad server)
   • Compare: ad server discovers pricing on list_creatives, transformation agent discovers pricing on list_creative_formats. Ad server has zero build cost (CPM accrues at serve time), transformation agent has non-zero build cost (per-unit pricing)

Vendor pricing is consistent across protocols

All vendor services use the same pattern: pricing_options[] on discovery responses, pricing_option_id in report_usage. Signals, content standards, creative agents, and property list agents all follow this.

Vendors often offer multiple pricing options per creative — volume/commitment tiers (lower CPM at higher spend), context-specific rates (premium vs. standard placements), or different pricing models for different product lines (CPM for rich media, per-unit for social variants). The buyer selects the appropriate pricing_option_id and passes it in report_usage.

Canonical formats

6. Canonical-formats authoring — Using the validated reference fixtures in static/examples/products/canonical/: the multi-format display fixture (nytimes_homepage_mrec.json) and the generative video fixture (veo_generative_video_15s.json):
   • Read each product’s format_options[] and identify every available format_kind
   • Select format_option_id when the product publishes one, and explain why a single-option product may not expose a separate selector
   • Explain why a creative-agent capability_id is not a substitute for a media-buy product’s format_option_id
   • Write the manifest asset map implied by the selected option’s slots, including when the buyer ships rendered assets and when the buyer ships a brief, video brief, or structured object
   • Explain single-option vs multi-option products: when one product accepts several canonical alternatives, and when one option fans out to several sizes through v1_format_ref[]
   • Explain why the seller validates against the canonical shape first and the product’s narrowing second, while the creative agent’s own capability can only narrow what it promises to produce

Cross-platform skills

7. Format discovery — Query sandbox agents for supported formats, compare requirements across publishers
8. Cross-platform adaptation — Adapt one concept across display, video, and native formats using build_creative with target_format_ids
9. Compliance — Configure provenance metadata and disclosure requirements for AI-generated creatives
10. Preview modes — Run preview_creative as request_type: "single", then "batch" (submit 5 creatives in one call and measure the speedup), then "variant" against a prior get_creative_delivery result. Compare output_format: "url" vs "html" for rendering latency.
11. Tracker-slot audit — For each sandbox format, inspect the assets array and determine whether it supports third-party measurement. Explain why assigning a DoubleVerify pixel to a broadcast spot won’t work, and which billing_measurement vendor would instead.
12. Broadcast identifiers — Build a broadcast manifest with distinct industry_identifiers[] for :15 and :30 cuts of the same spot. Verify the creative-identifier-type values and explain why each cut needs its own Ad-ID.

Assessment

Dimension	Weight	What Addie evaluates
Interaction models	20%	Correctly identifies and works with all three creative agent types
Cross-platform adaptation	15%	Adapts creatives across display, video, native, preview, measurement, and broadcast workflows
Canonical formats	10%	Reads format_options[], selects format_kind and format_option_id, explains single-option, multi-option, and v1_format_ref[] fan-out cardinality, maps asset_source values to buyer-provided, agent-synthesized, seller-rendered, seller-designed, and publisher-hosted workflows, and explains canonical-first/product-second validation order
Compliance	25%	Configures disclosures, provenance, and regulatory requirements
Pricing and accounts	15%	Understands rate cards, reads pricing from list_creatives and list_creative_formats, interprets build costs, closes the report_usage loop
Analytical skill	15%	Interprets creative feature evaluation and delivery results

Passing threshold: 70%.

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