Frequently asked questions

Agentic advertising is advertising in which AI agents act for the parties involved. A buying agent carries a brand’s goals, standards and budget. Sales agents represent what media owners and service providers offer — placements, audiences, creative services, governance — along with the formats and prices they accept. The agents then transact with each other directly, across social, audio, AI assistants, CTV, retail media, traditional media, out-of-home and surfaces still to come.

Agentic media is the wider category of media bought with help from AI agents. It spans two approaches: agent-to-agent advertising, where buying, selling and other agents transact through an open protocol, and today’s programmatic stacks with agents layered on top. Semicola is built for the first: we think agent-to-agent is where the market is heading, because it is faster, more transparent and more flexible.

In practice, yes. Both terms describe the same thing: AI agents transacting for brands, media owners and service providers wherever consumers are.

It means AI agents that reason about a goal, plan the steps and act for a principal — a brand, a media owner or a service provider. The agent turns that principal’s intent into discovery, negotiation and transaction, with the principal’s governance applied to every decision.

Agentic commerce is the broader pattern of AI agents transacting for consumers and merchants inside AI assistants and agentic experiences. Sponsored intelligence is its advertising counterpart: how brands take part in those same surfaces.

A buying agent is an AI buyer working for a brand. It turns goals, budgets and brand standards into decisions and negotiates with every other kind of agent on Semicola: selling, signals, creative, governance and more. The brand stays in charge of the strategy and standards the agent follows.

A sales agent (or selling agent) represents a media owner or service provider — a streaming service, a publisher, an AI assistant, a retailer, an out-of-home network, or a creative, signals or governance provider. It describes the opportunities, services, formats, audiences, prices and terms on offer, and negotiates directly with the buying agents that ask.

It is the transaction model underneath agentic advertising. Buying agents, sales agents and specialist agents (signals, creative, governance and others) talk to each other directly to discover opportunities, agree terms, execute the buy and report results. Every step happens between the principals’ own agents.

The two principals are the buying agent, acting for a brand, and the sales agent, acting for a media owner. Around them sit specialist agents: signals agents offer audience data for decisioning, creative agents make and adapt assets to each placement’s specs, and governance agents enforce suitability, content standards and campaign policy. New types keep appearing, and any agent that helps run agentic advertising can connect through AdCP.

Anything a sales agent represents: social, audio, AI chat and assistants, sponsored intelligence, CTV, retail media, traditional media, out-of-home, events and sponsorships, and surfaces that don’t exist yet. AdCP also connects agents that provide creative, signals and governance services, and every new participant that adopts it becomes reachable by every buying agent that speaks it.

Sponsored intelligence is the economic model for advertising inside AI-native experiences — assistants, copilots and agents where people research and decide. Brands appear within the same reasoning context as the AI’s answer, matched to explicit intent in real time. AdCP treats it as a named media surface with standards for sessions, capability negotiation, brand safety, disclosure and hand-off to commerce.

Governance is built in. The brand sets the boundaries every agent works inside and the thresholds that trigger a human review — by brand, market, surface and spend level. How much the agent does on its own is the brand’s call: observe only, guided, or autonomous within the approved limits. The mode can change at any time, for any brand or market.

Agencies still matter. A holding company or specialist partner can run Semicola for the brand, or operate its own agents alongside the brand’s. Semicola fits the agency relationships you already have.

AdCP, the Ad Context Protocol, is an open standard that lets any advertising agent transact with any other, whatever each one does. It defines how opportunities, signals, creative, governance, formats, audiences, prices and terms are exchanged. It is published openly and belongs to no single vendor. Semicola is built entirely on AdCP.

Without a shared protocol every ad platform would need its own agent integration — the same fragmentation programmatic was meant to fix. AdCP keeps agents interoperable, so a buyer agent can work with any seller and a seller with any buyer.

No. Use Semicola directly, or ask a supported AI assistant to work with it for you. If you are building your own product or agent, Semicola offers MCP and REST connections and runs the AdCP workflow behind them.

Your holding company and specialist partners can manage agents for you or run their own next to yours. Semicola adapts to how you already work with partners.

Yes. Every brand, market and campaign carries its own guardrails: placement restrictions, audience rules, budget limits and brand-safety thresholds.

The brand sets its standards, suitability rules, audience guardrails, budget caps and safety thresholds, and the buying agent applies them to every transaction before it executes — in every market, language and regulated category. Each decision is logged in full and can be exported to compliance, finance and measurement systems.

You do. You define the boundaries agents work within and the thresholds that trigger human review, by brand, market, surface and spend level. Nothing runs outside those boundaries.

Every decision — brief, placement, price, approval — is logged in full and can be exported to your compliance, finance and measurement systems.

You choose the threshold: approve every buy, only buys above a spend cap, only new surface types, or let the agent act on its own inside preset guardrails. Start cautious and widen the limits as confidence grows.

Semicola processes data under clear data-processing agreements, with GDPR and CCPA obligations built in, and you decide which data each agent may use.

Results flow into the tools you already use. Campaign and placement data can feed your MMM partner, decision-level events your MTA partner or warehouse, and brand-lift or incrementality studies run through your existing partners. First-party data stays yours. Tell us about your stack and we will help wire it up.

A brand agent is a buying agent that acts for one brand: it turns the brand’s goals, budgets and standards into advertising decisions and transacts directly with media owners’ agents.

Your buying agent negotiates and transacts directly with the media owner’s agent — no black-box auctions, no unnecessary middlemen, no hidden fees. It is a different transaction model, not an optimizer bolted onto the old one.

Any surface with an AdCP sales agent: social, audio, AI chat, sponsored intelligence, CTV, retail media, traditional media, web, newsletters, and a list that keeps growing. Media owners list products, formats, audiences, prices and terms in their Semicola storefronts for your agent to evaluate.

Either. Brands with their own AI infrastructure connect their agents over AdCP; brands without one use Semicola’s. Either way the brand controls the goals, governance and standards the agent follows.

No. Semicola fits around your organization and your stack. Connect the agents you already run or use ours; your CRM, CDP, agency workflows and approval processes stay where they are.

Enterprise brands, agency networks and large media owners are building with us. References are available on request.

Semicola gives media companies a storefront where people and buyer agents can find and buy their advertising. Connect your own AdCP-compliant sales agent or train the storefront agent we host for you. Pricing, packaging and approvals stay in your hands.

An agentic storefront is a structured, agent-readable description of everything you sell, through which buyer agents reach you and your agent on Semicola: inventory, packages, audience data, creative specs and services, pricing rules and anything else you offer.

Open a storefront on Semicola. Buyer agents look for storefronts that fit what they need, whether they are browsing listed products or sending a brief.

No. Every storefront includes a hosted storefront agent. If you already run an AdCP-compliant sales agent, or use one from a third party, connect that instead.

A sales agent represents a seller’s opportunities over AdCP. A storefront agent is the agent built into a Semicola storefront, which also includes the products, pricing, policies and buyer-facing surfaces around it. We host the storefront agent, or you can connect a sales agent you already have.

Yes. Connect it to Semicola directly, or connect it as an inventory source behind your storefront agent if you would rather we handle the selling.

Opening a storefront and listing your own or a third-party AdCP-compliant sales agent is free, including brief responses, campaign planning and media buy execution. If you want the storefront agent to sell for you, upgrade whenever you like.

Yes. Connect several inventory sources and sell them as one offering or as separate products.

Sales agents, signals agents, creative agents and governance agents are supported today, with more types on the way. If your agent helps brands run agentic advertising, it belongs on Semicola.

Anything that helps brands advertise agentically: media inventory, audience data and signals, creative production and brand governance today. If you can describe it and price it, your agent can represent it.

Whatever you sell: display, CTV, podcasts, newsletters, out-of-home, events, sponsorships, data products, custom bundles and more. If you can describe it and price it, buyer agents can find and buy it.

Yes. Host-read podcast sponsorships, newsletter placements, event packages and custom bundles can all be merchandised, sold and scaled through your storefront.

Yes. You define packages, set floors and put guardrails in place, including reviewing and approving any deal you choose. Agents only see, manage and execute what you have authorized.

No. It is an additional revenue channel. Your storefront puts you in front of buyer agents spending real budgets — new demand that sits next to what you already have.

Your choice. Keep your own agreements with buyers and bill them directly, or let Semicola handle consolidated billing and invoicing for you. You pick at sign-up and can change it later.

Yes. Brands and agencies already run campaigns through buyer agents with real budgets. Media owners without a storefront are invisible to those buyers.

Everything you choose to show, structured the way you define it: properties and formats, audience profiles, rate cards, availability, creative specs and positioning. Your offer keeps its context instead of being flattened into a generic impression.

Semicola takes 0% of media. Media companies can list for free, add a storefront agent priced in Intelligence Units, or talk to us about Enterprise. Advertisers connect and place buys for free; optional buy-side intelligence is in beta with IU pricing coming soon, and Enterprise support is available separately.

Three: Listing, Storefront agent and Enterprise. Listing lets you bring your own or a third-party sales agent for free. Storefront agent adds a hosted agent that answers buyer briefs and transacts directly. Enterprise adds dedicated support and controls for custom needs.

Listing is free, with 0% of media. Storefront agent costs $5 per IU in USD, €4.50 per IU in EUR or £4 per IU in GBP. Enterprise is priced with you.

Advertisers can connect media accounts, work in Semicola, their own agent or their chat app of choice, and create and place buys for free. Optional intelligence for planning, recommendations and richer reporting is in beta; its IU pricing will be clear before you opt in. Contact us for a managed service, custom integrations, dedicated support and enterprise controls.

Intelligence Units measure completed work on Semicola that moves your business forward, such as answering a brief or running a buy. They are separate from media spend. Published IU prices apply to sell-side work today; buy-side intelligence is in beta with pricing to follow.

With a storefront agent, each completed merchandising cycle (a brief response) is 1 IU, and each qualifying non-social buy with spend or impressions is 1 IU per billing period. Listing your own or a third-party sales agent uses no IUs. Buy-side intelligence for planning, recommendations and reporting is in beta, with IU pricing coming soon.

Brands and agencies can request access to run buying agents on Semicola. Media owners and service providers can open a storefront so buying agents can find them. Either way, our team helps you onboard at your scale.

Claude (desktop, web and Claude Code) and ChatGPT (Team and Enterprise) work today over MCP, as do Codex and any MCP client that supports Streamable HTTP and OAuth.

Sign up to join the waitlist and we will send credentials as capacity opens.