Buyer / brand track

AdCP buyer track (C1-C4): multi-agent buying orchestration, brand identity protocols, creative workflows, sponsored intelligence, and a buyer agent build project.

Buyer / brand track (C1–C4)

Members only — Requires Basics credential (A1–A3). Four modules, ~105 minutes total.

This track teaches you the demand side of AdCP. You’ll learn how buyer agents orchestrate across multiple sellers, how brand identity and compliance protocols work, and how creative workflows and Sponsored Intelligence fit together. The track culminates in a build project where you create a working buyer agent.

Completing this track (plus A1–A3) earns the AdCP practitioner credential.

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C1: Multi-agent buying and media planning

~20 min | Prerequisite: A3

How buyer agents orchestrate across multiple sales agents simultaneously: discovery, portfolio allocation, proposals, and measuring reach across publishers.

Reading list

Media buy overview

The media buy protocol: how agents discover, negotiate, and execute advertising campaigns.

get_products task

Product discovery from multiple sellers — the first step in any buying workflow.

create_media_buy task

Campaign creation: manual mode, proposal mode, validation, and approval lifecycle.

Orchestrator design

Architecture patterns for agents that coordinate across multiple sellers.

Pricing models

pricing_options[] on products, buyer selects by pricing_option_id: CPM, vCPM, CPP, CPA, flat rate, time.

Accountability terms

performance_standards, measurement_terms, and cancellation_policy — negotiable on guaranteed buys.

Targeting

Targeting options, audience overlays, and geo-targeting.

Version negotiation

Declare adcp_major_version on requests; sellers respond with VERSION_UNSUPPORTED when incompatible.

Error handling

Error taxonomy: transient, correctable, terminal. Includes GOVERNANCE_DENIED, TERMS_REJECTED, VERSION_UNSUPPORTED.

Trusted Match Protocol

How your campaigns execute at impression time: context match, identity match, and cross-publisher frequency capping.

TMP Buyer Guide

Endpoint integration: responding to Context Match and Identity Match requests, structuring offers, provider registration.

get_media_buys task

Operational monitoring: lifecycle state, creative approvals, valid actions, delivery snapshots.

Key concepts

• Multi-agent buying — query multiple sellers in parallel, compare, allocate, execute
• Orchestration pattern — discover, evaluate, allocate, execute, monitor
• Order lifecycle — pending_creatives → pending_start → active; check valid_actions from get_media_buys before acting. S1 covers the full state machine and recovery
• Version negotiation — declare adcp_major_version on every request; handle VERSION_UNSUPPORTED by selecting a compatible seller or downgrading the payload
• Pricing selection — products return pricing_options[]; buyer selects one via pricing_option_id in create_media_buy
• Negotiated accountability — for guaranteed buys, propose measurement_terms / performance_standards; seller accepts, adjusts, or returns TERMS_REJECTED. S1 covers the recovery patterns
• Account required on updates — update_media_buy takes account + media_buy_id; omitting account is a protocol error
• Audience targeting — sync_audiences for custom segments
• Impression-time execution — campaigns activate through TMP at serve time; frequency caps, audience eligibility, and brand suitability are enforced via Identity Match without exposing user data to buyers alongside content context
• Account setup — sync_accounts to establish billing before buying

Start C1 with Addie

“I’d like to start certification module C1.”

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C2: Brand identity, compliance, and safety

~20 min | Prerequisite: C1

The Brand Protocol (brand.json), content standards, and how brand agents enforce guidelines across automated buying.

Reading list

Brand protocol

Brand identity claims, brand.json discovery, brand hierarchy, and brand agents.

brand.json specification

The brand.json format: identity, logos, colors, guidelines, and agent declarations.

Seller verification

How buyer agents verify seller identity and publisher authorization before transacting.

For advertisers

How advertisers license talent rights through the brand protocol — pricing, scopes, and what you get.

get_rights task

Search for licensable talent rights — pricing, availability, and exclusion filtering.

acquire_rights task

License talent rights: generation credentials, rights constraints, revocation, and approval workflows.

update_rights task

Extend, adjust, or pause an existing rights grant.

For rights holders

How rights holders monetize talent through the brand protocol.

Content standards

How content standards define what’s appropriate, how calibration works, and local execution.

calibrate_content task

Testing whether content meets brand standards before placement.

Policy compliance

How compliance is enforced during media buy execution.

Creative governance

Creative quality and compliance governance.

Campaign governance

Tie campaigns to media plans: budget authority, multi-party validation, and always-on compliance.

Policy registry

Community-maintained compliance policies (COPPA, GDPR, HFSS) that brands reference by ID.

Key concepts

• Brand identity protocol — brand.json at /.well-known/brand.json declares identity; buyers use their own brand.json for advertiser identity and sellers’ brand.json files for seller identity and signing-key discovery
• Content standards — automated compliance checking via MCP-based brand agents
• The Oracle model — using AI to evaluate brand safety at scale
• Supply chain preferences — suitability, safety, and sustainability requirements
• Campaign governance — campaign plans define authorized parameters; check_governance validates every transaction before execution, returns a governance_context token you attach to the buy envelope, and uses purchase_type to scope which rules apply (media_buy, rights_license, signal_activation, creative_services)
• Governance denial recovery — GOVERNANCE_DENIED is a correctable buyer-side decision, not a transport error: fix targeting, creative, or plan reference and retry. S4 goes deeper on the correlation model
• Policy registry — shared compliance policies (regulations and standards) referenced by ID, not written per-brand
• Governance adoption — governance agents support incremental adoption (audit → advisory → enforce) as an internal configuration, not a protocol field
• Policy categories — regulatory regimes (children_directed, fair_housing, fair_lending) that plans declare and governance agents enforce
• Restricted attributes — personal data categories (health_data, racial_ethnic_origin) that must not be used for targeting under applicable policies

Start C2 with Addie

“I’d like to start certification module C2.”

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C3: Creative workflows

~20 min | Prerequisite: C2

How creative assets flow through AdCP: build_creative, preview_creative, sync_creatives. Cross-platform adaptation and the Sponsored Intelligence Protocol.

Reading list

Creative overview

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

build_creative task

Creative generation and transformation.

preview_creative task

Previewing creatives before deployment.

sync_creatives task

Synchronizing creative assets with publisher platforms.

Generative creative

AI-generated creative workflows and best practices.

Creative agent pricing

How creative agents charge: pricing discovery, build costs, and billing reconciliation.

Canonical formats

Product-level format_options[], format_kind, and canonical-first validation for 3.1 creative requirements.

Sponsored Intelligence

Conversational brand experiences in AI assistants.

SI specification

The Sponsored Intelligence protocol: sessions, messages, and offerings.

Key concepts

• Creative lifecycle — build_creative, preview_creative, sync_creatives — callable on any agent implementing the Creative Protocol, including sales agents
• Preview modes — preview_creative supports single, batch, and variant requests — choose the mode that fits the workflow (S2 covers the tradeoffs)
• Cross-platform adaptation — agents adapt assets across display, video, audio, native, and broadcast formats. In 3.1, sellers may publish canonical format_options[]; choose format_kind by creative shape, then validate the canonical first and the product’s narrowing second. S2 covers the hands-on details
• Seller-side generation — sales agents can generate creatives at serve time from a brief provided in the media buy
• Creative pricing — creative agents can charge for their services. When they do, list_creatives returns pricing_options from your account’s rate card, and build_creative returns the cost incurred. See the creative pricing specification for details.
• Sponsored Intelligence — brands participate in conversational AI with transparency and user control. SI is an experimental surface in AdCP 3.0 (feature id sponsored_intelligence.core); session lifecycle and UI components may change between 3.x releases with at least 6 weeks’ notice.

Canonical-format buyer glossary

Term	Buyer-track meaning
format_kind	The canonical creative shape a seller accepts, such as image, video_hosted, or native_in_feed. Pick it by the creative you can ship, not by the media channel alone.
format_options[]	Product-level creative requirements returned by get_products. Each option narrows a canonical with seller-specific sizes, slots, selectors, or production constraints.
asset_source	Who produces the rendered bytes for a canonical asset. Buyers use it to decide whether they upload finished assets or provide a brief/input for seller, publisher, or agent production.

S2 goes deeper on authoring manifests, format_option_id vs creative-agent capability_id, and the canonical-first/product-second validation flow.

Practice exercise

1. Canonical-format selection from get_products — Given a product response that includes multiple format_options[]:
   • List every available format_kind and the buyer-visible product constraints that matter for creative routing
   • Select the option that matches the campaign creative shape, using format_option_id when the product publishes one
   • State the validation order at a high level: canonical shape first, product narrowing second
   • Review canonical-format FORMAT_* entries in errors[] before routing: most are non-fatal advisories, while broken placement references require failing closed for that placement

Advisory code	Buyer action
FORMAT_PROJECTION_FAILED	The legacy format still exists, but the SDK could not project it to format_options[]. Prefer an explicit canonical option when available; otherwise flag the seller or registry gap.
FORMAT_DECLARATION_DIVERGENT	The seller’s v1 and v2 declarations disagree. Prefer format_options[] for 3.1 routing, and flag the seller declaration mismatch.
FORMAT_DECLARATION_V1_AMBIGUOUS	The v2 declaration cannot safely map back to one v1 named format. Do not invent a v1 fallback; use the canonical path or ask the seller to add v1_format_ref[].
FORMAT_OPTION_UNRESOLVED	A placement references a missing publisher-catalog option. Fail closed for that placement reference and ask the publisher to fix the catalog.
FORMAT_DECLARATION_V1_LOSSY_MULTI_SIZE	Some v1 size coverage was dropped from a multi-size v2 declaration. Continue only with the surfaced covered sizes, or choose a fully declared option.

Start C3 with Addie

“I’d like to start certification module C3.”

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C4: Build project — your first buyer agent

~45 min | Prerequisite: C3

Create a working buyer agent that discovers products and executes media buys. Use any AI coding assistant (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot) with the @adcp/sdk SDK. The skill tested is orchestrating a buying workflow correctly.

What you’ll build

• Account setup with sync_accounts
• Product discovery from at least 2 sellers
• Media buy creation with targeting and budget — including a fresh UUID v4 idempotency_key per logical buy, and correct retry behavior that resends the identical payload with the same key on network failure (the mechanics of what the seller does with the key — replay, conflict, expired — are taught in S1: Media buy)
• Creative sync with at least 1 format
• Campaign monitoring via delivery reporting

How you’ll validate

Your buyer agent runs against the public test agent (test-mcp). Use npx @adcp/sdk@latest to execute tool calls and verify your agent handles the complete buying workflow:

npx @adcp/sdk@latest test-mcp get_products '{"brief":"your campaign brief"}'

See Validate Your Agent for CLI setup and the full testing workflow.

Validating across sellers

Buyer agents don’t claim specialisms — specialisms describe what sellers offer. But your buyer agent should handle every specialism it expects to transact against. The storyboards a seller passes (declared via supported_protocols and specialisms in their get_adcp_capabilities) tell you what behaviors to expect.

Review the Compliance Catalog and note which specialisms your target sellers claim — that’s your test matrix.

Assessment rubric

Dimension	Weight	What Addie evaluates
Specification quality	20%	Can you specify a buying workflow in AdCP terms?
Schema compliance	25%	Agent requests and responses validate against schemas
Error handling	15%	Handles seller errors and async responses
Design rationale	20%	Can you explain orchestration and buying strategy?
Extension ability	20%	Can you extend the agent with new buying capabilities?

Passing threshold: 70%.

Any AI coding assistant is welcome. The build must demonstrate cross-role interaction.

Start C4 with Addie

“I’d like to start certification module C4.”

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What’s next

After completing C1–C4, you’ve earned the AdCP practitioner credential. From here you can pursue specialist modules:

• S1: Media buy — transaction flows, pricing, orchestration
• S2: Creative — asset workflows, format compliance
• S3: Signals — measurement, attribution, optimization
• S4: Governance — brand safety, campaign governance, compliance, policy registry
• S5: Sponsored Intelligence — conversational brand experiences