Big question
What may an agent decide with your money, and who answers for what it bought?
The position
The advertiser is answerable, because the contract sits with the advertiser. The platform answers for nothing it does not record, which is why the required log list belongs in the contract rather than in the review.
Why it is live
Automated layers move money after the plan is signed, and the accountability moves with them while the arithmetic does not. IAB Tech Lab's AAMP 2.3 in July 2026 added identity, thresholds, approvals and auditability for agentic buying, and NIST IR 8607 in August 2026 records how hard human oversight becomes as agents gain autonomy.
The case for acting now
DocumentedA standard now names the logs, thresholds and approval points, so the list can be written into a master services agreement this year.
The case against
UnknowableNo experiment settles who is answerable, no generally available product runs a whole buy unsupervised, and no published case exists of any of these failures happening to an advertiser.
Where the weight sits
For writing the decision rights down now, because the standard exists and the case law does not. The cost of writing it is days and the cost of not writing it is unbounded.
What would change this
A holding company putting a required log list for automated buying into a master services agreement a client can quote, or the first dispute over an agent's spending reaching a decision.
Where this is taught
Where this has moved
AI and Automation
Sources
- IAB Tech Lab AAMP 2.3, 30 Jul 2026secondary
- NIST IR 8607, Aug 2026primary