More than 1,000 brands have already adopted Vibe.co's MCP integration, and MCP-enabled buying now accounts for a large portion of ad spend on the self-serve CTV platform, according to Vibe Co-Founder and CEO Arthur Querou. The figure signals that agentic ad buying on connected TV has moved from hypothesis to production workflow — faster than many in the industry expected.

The technology underpinning this shift is young. Anthropic only introduced model context protocol (MCP), the open-source standard AI agents use to connect to other applications, in late 2024. Ad tech companies built the Ad Context Protocol on top of MCP just last year.

What does agentic CTV buying look like in practice?

Independent agency InterMedia, which primarily buys CTV for performance-based advertisers, began using a combination of MCP and API integrations with Vibe.co and Olyzon a few months ago. Walmart recently acquired Vibe.co; Olyzon is a CTV ad decisioning startup that has expanded into other digital channels.

The setup works in two layers. Vibe lets InterMedia view CTV campaign reporting inside Claude's dashboard and order specific actions based on that data. Olyzon then connects those campaigns to DSPs and SSPs, enabling buying across other channels such as display and digital out-of-home.

The workflow frees campaign managers to focus on higher-value work, said Sydney Brower, InterMedia's director of digital media and strategy. It gives them more "time and brain power" for deeper, client-driven thinking.

It also redefines expertise, added David Nyurenberg, InterMedia's SVP of digital. "Instead of being expert in how to navigate a platform and push the buttons and knowing where to go," he said, "you're an expert in being judicious about what changes to make."

How did the integrations come together?

Both pieces arrived recently. Vibe's Claude integration, announced publicly last month alongside other AI-related integrations, grew out of internal habits: many Vibe employees had already started using Claude or ChatGPT for ad buying on other channels, Querou said, so extending the capability to Vibe's own platform was a natural next step.

InterMedia was among the first agencies to test it. "SMBs use these tools," Querou said of MCP. "They have limited resources, and so they want to be able to use AI to manage their campaigns."

Olyzon released its AI orchestration layer on Wednesday during Advertising Week New York. Technically, Olyzon uses APIs rather than MCP to connect to partner platforms including Vibe. APIs are more deterministic, explained Co-Founder and CEO Jules Minvielle, returning consistent, repeatable results — critical when reporting specific figures. "An agent talking to an agent is not the same as having our agents writing what's needed directly in the API," Minvielle said.

Querou set a blunt standard for future tooling: "There is no new platform I would use that doesn't have an MCP."

Who pilots the agent?

In a live demonstration, Nyurenberg prompted Claude with a question about how various CTV campaigns were doing in Vibe. The agent generated a report showing spend across major publishers including Peacock and Warner Bros. Discovery, broke down trends such as growth differences between inventory sources, and suggested performance improvements.

The agent can implement changes directly from within Claude, but Brower said she typically double-checks each DSP dashboard before giving the go-ahead. "You can trust AI to fly a plane, but I still want a pilot in the cockpit to watch it," she said.

The system still has friction. Integrating data from multiple sources requires troubleshooting and manual standardization, Brower said, because DSPs often use different terminology for the same concepts. Ownership of the agent itself remains ambiguous — when InterMedia accesses Vibe through Claude, even the principals don't clearly know who owns it.

After just a few months, InterMedia already runs the majority of its biddable campaigns through the agentic workflow, and plans to integrate direct insertion order functionality into Olyzon's tool.

What comes next?

Nyurenberg predicts larger holding companies and brands already building agents for audience identification and campaign planning will develop similar media buying integrations in house — though many will stitch together tech from SaaS partners. "The agency is going to have to evolve," he said. "They're going to have to be experts in agentic and AI who are also experts in marketing."

Minvielle framed the shift against the build-versus-buy debate that surrounded DSPs roughly 15 years ago. "My conviction here," he said, "is that, in 18 months, every single media buyer in the world will be equipped with a platform like ours."