Agentic buying on connected TV is a workflow in which an AI agent reads campaign data, reports on it and, once the buyer approves, applies bid, budget or inventory changes inside the buying platform. InterMedia, an independent US agency, now handles most of its biddable campaigns this way through Vibe.co and Olyzon (AdExchanger, 8 October 2026).
Connected TV (CTV) is video content, and the advertising around it, delivered to a television screen over the internet. Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open-source standard that lets AI agents connect to other applications; Anthropic introduced it in late 2024. In 2025 several ad tech companies built the Ad Context Protocol on top of MCP (AdExchanger, 8 October 2026).
How is the InterMedia setup built?
InterMedia buys CTV advertising mainly for performance-focused companies. A few months ago it began combining MCP and API connections with two platforms: Vibe.co, a self-serve platform for buying CTV ads that Walmart bought recently, and Olyzon, which started in CTV ad decisioning and has since moved into other digital channels.
The workflow has four steps:
- Campaign reporting from Vibe.co is displayed inside Claude.
- The buyer asks how the campaigns are performing. The agent returns a report covering spend by publisher, trends in the data and suggested improvements.
- If the buyer gives the instruction, the agent applies the change in the platform.
- Olyzon links the campaigns to DSPs and SSPs, which extends buying to display, digital out-of-home and other channels.
MCP or API: which connection does what?
The two vendors made different choices. Jules Minvielle, co-founder and CEO of Olyzon, explains that APIs are deterministic: the same request returns the same result every time, which matters when the output is reported figures.
| MCP | API | |
|---|---|---|
| Used by | Vibe.co's connection to Claude | Olyzon's connections to many partner platforms, Vibe.co included |
| Main reason given | Analysis and decisions from a single dashboard | Consistent, repeatable results |
| Source | Arthur Querou, co-founder and CEO of Vibe.co | Jules Minvielle, co-founder and CEO of Olyzon |
Where does the human stay in the loop?
The final decision stays with a person. Sydney Brower, director of digital media and strategy at InterMedia, says the agent can carry out performance changes, but she prefers to confirm in each DSP's own dashboard that everything has been entered correctly before approving.
David Nyurenberg, InterMedia's SVP of digital, argues that the definition of expertise is shifting from knowing how to operate a platform to judging which changes are worth making. Brower adds that the workflow leaves campaign managers more time for client-focused thinking.
What are the limits today?
- Standardisation: even with MCP, combining data and functions from several sources still needs troubleshooting and manual alignment, because DSPs use different terms for the same concept.
- Ownership of the agent: InterMedia regards the agent inside Olyzon's platform as Olyzon's. When Vibe.co is reached through Claude, ownership is less clear.
- Scope: the workflow covers most of InterMedia's biddable campaigns. The agency wants to add direct insertion orders to Olyzon's tool.
How widely is it used?
Vibe.co announced its Claude integration in September 2026, and Olyzon released its AI orchestration layer on 7 October 2026 during Advertising Week New York. Querou states that over 1,000 brands are using Vibe.co's MCP integration and that MCP-enabled buying accounts for a large share of spend on the platform (company statement; AdExchanger, 8 October 2026). He says the main users are small and medium-sized businesses with limited resources.
Nyurenberg expects large holding companies and brands to build comparable buying integrations in house, while many others assemble them from several software providers. Minvielle forecasts that within 18 months every media buyer will work with a platform of this kind.
What should a CTV buyer in the Gulf check before adopting it?
For a brand or agency in the GCC assessing a similar setup, the InterMedia example suggests five checks:
- Does the buying platform offer MCP or API access?
- Can the agent only read data, or can it also write changes?
- Who holds the approval step before a change goes live?
- Which connection do reported figures come through, and does the same query always return the same number?
- Who owns the agent and the workflow built around it: the agency, the platform or the brand?
Key points
- Agentic buying on CTV is in production use as a workflow in which the agent reports and, with the buyer's approval, applies changes.
- InterMedia manages most of its biddable campaigns this way through Vibe.co and Olyzon.
- Vibe.co relies on MCP, while Olyzon mostly uses APIs for the sake of consistent results.
- Differences in terminology between platforms and the ownership of the agent remain open issues.
Source: Victoria McNally, How Does Agentic Buying Work In CTV?, AdExchanger, 8 October 2026.