The Aperiam Podcast AdCP with Joe Hirsch of Swivel
Feb 11, 2026
Joe Hirsch, founder and CEO of Swivel and co-creator of the Ad Context Protocol, works on AI automation and agentic advertising. He explains AdCP as a standard for AI agents to trade ads across platforms. The conversation covers why existing RTB falls short, how agentic buys reshape workflows and staffing, who benefits, and signals to watch for real adoption.
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Transcript
Episode notes
AdCP Covers More Than RTB's Auction Focus
- OpenRTB serves specific use-cases like auction-based programmatic but doesn't cover many ad platform types.
- AdCP targets a broader set of participants (ad servers, CMPs, measurement vendors) that RTB wasn't designed for.
Agentic Trading Faces A Chicken‑And‑Egg Problem
- There's a chicken-and-egg problem: supply needs agentic demand and demand needs agentic supply.
- The industry is investing in tech ahead of media dollars, creating a lag between capability and spend.
Agentic Buys Compress Workflows To Seconds
- Agentic buys can bypass DSPs/SSPs and compress workflows dramatically, executing buys in seconds rather than days.
- They reimagine the human media-buy workflow into automated agentic negotiation and execution.