Optable Launches Planner Agent to Speed Up Publisher Ad Planning

Optable, a leader in identity resolution and audience activation for publishers, announced the general availability of Optable Planner Agent, an AI-powered agentic solution that automates the most time-consuming steps in publisher ad planning. Built on open standards including the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Ad Context Protocol (AdCP), Planner Agent represents the first purpose-built agentic tool that works seamlessly across identity, audience, and activation workflows. Planner Agent reads RFPs, interprets campaign goals, builds audience segments from first-party & third-party data signals, recommends inventory packages, and activates campaigns-all with human-in-the-loop controls that keep publishers in command of their operations.

Solving Publisher Ad Planning's Biggest Challenge

Today's ad planning process is fragmented, manual, and slow. Publishers juggle spreadsheets, emails, and disconnected tools to respond to advertiser RFPs. Proposals can take days or weeks to complete, during which time coordination across sales, operations, and data teams creates bottlenecks. Errors creep in, and revenue opportunities are lost to inefficiency. "Publishers have been telling us for years that ad planning is broken-it's too slow, too manual, and too dependent on heroic efforts from overworked teams," said Bosko Milekic, Chief Product Officer at Optable. "Planner Agent represents our vision for how AI should work in advertising: intelligent automation that amplifies human expertise rather than replacing it. By building on open standards like AdCP, we're ensuring that publishers can participate in the agentic future on their own terms, with full transparency and control. This isn't just about making one workflow faster-it's about fundamentally reimagining how publishers can compete and scale their businesses in an AI-driven ecosystem."

Also Read: PubMatic and Butler/Till Launch First Fully Agentic AI Campaign Across Connected TV

Planner Agent transforms this workflow by:

• Reducing RFP-to-activation time from weeks to hours
• Increasing proposal throughput without additional headcount
• Creating consistency and transparency across every brief
• Brings intelligence to the campaign planning process by suggesting relevant bespoke audiences built from all of available data sources
• Providing a future-proof interface for working with agentic buyers and LLM-driven systems
• Building on open protocols (MCP, AdCP) so publishers maintain interoperability and control

How Planner Agent Works

Planner Agent operates through a streamlined six-step process:

• Ingest RFP or Brief - Agent reads uploaded RFPs and interprets campaign objectives, target audiences, and constraints
• Generate Recommendations - Agent proposes target audience definitions based on the publisher's first-party data and enriched signals
• Find & Build Audiences - Agent selects matching audiences from available supply and automatically builds audience segments in Optable
• Human Review - A human-in-the-loop approves or modifies recommendations, factoring in compliance, brand safety, and business rules
• Activate - Once approved, the agent pushes campaigns into configured SSPs, ad servers, or partner systems
• Report & Optimize - Delivery data and outcomes are measured for reporting and continuous improvement

Industry Leaders Embrace Agentic Ad Planning Early partners are already seeing the transformative potential of Planner Agent in their operations. "The advertising industry is at an inflection point where agentic systems will fundamentally reshape how buyers and sellers interact," said David Olesnevich, Head of Product VP of Weather Data and Advertising Products at The Weather Company. "That's precisely why we've been strong supporters of we are supporting the Ad Context Protocol—open standards are essential to ensuring this transformation benefits the entire ecosystem, not just a handful of walled gardens. Planner Agent demonstrates how publishers can As we continue to look for ways to harness AI to unlock efficiencies and revenue opportunities while maintaining the transparency and control that open protocols provide, we at The Weather Company, we see tools like Planner Agent as critical infrastructure for the future of publisher monetization." “Hearst has long monetized first-party data at scale, but the next frontier is operational speed and intelligent automation,” said Jessica Hogue, Chief Data Officer, Consumer Media at Hearst. “Planner Agent is an exciting development in the market that seeks to connect systems and agents to automate key planning and activation steps. We’re eager to explore how these new capabilities can help us generate stronger proposals, streamline executions, and ultimately deliver better outcomes for our partners.” Charlie Morris, VP of Partnerships & Data Strategy at Mediavine, added: "Ad planning has needed a smarter approach for a while, and Planner Agent delivers. For Mediavine, it means our team can manage more campaigns without losing the quality of our audience recommendations. Most importantly, it keeps humans in control by using automation to support our standards for compliance and brand safety, not replace them.” Built on Open Standards for an Agentic Future Planner Agent leverages AdCP—open protocols for the advertising industry that allow LLM agents to interact with context-aware tools and APIs securely and predictably. This standards-based approach ensures publishers remain interoperable and in control as the advertising ecosystem evolves toward agentic collaboration. Optable plans to continue to expand their roadmap for agentic advertising and will be introducing more AI-based capabilities and partnerships throughout the year. SOURCE: BusinessWire