Decision-Makers track

AdCP for Decision-Makers (L1-L3): a free, reasoning-only certification for brand leaders, agency executives, and SMB owners who evaluate, brief, and decide on agentic advertising but do not build agents.

AdCP for Decision-Makers (L1–L3)

Free and open to everyone. Three short modules, about 45 minutes total. No agent-building, no code, no live agent queries — you earn this credential through strategic reasoning alone.

Every other path in this program gates on hands-on work: the Basics track has you query a live agent, and the role tracks culminate in building one. That is the right bar for practitioners — and the wrong bar for the people who evaluate, brief, and decide but delegate the building.

This track is for them: the brand media leader building a case for the CMO, the agency trading-desk exec deciding whether to adopt a standard, the founder figuring out whether they can reach AI surfaces without hiring an engineer. You will not build anything. You will learn to direct the people who do.

Completing L1–L3 earns the AdCP for Decision-Makers credential.

Who this is for

Brand leaders

Heads of media and marketing building the business case for agentic advertising and briefing agencies on what to do differently.

Agency executives

Trading-desk and programmatic leaders deciding whether to adopt a standard for buying across AI surfaces — and where the competitive edge is.

SMB owners

Founders and operators who want to reach AI platforms through a partner, starting from the product data they already have.

How this track is different

	Basics & role tracks	Decision-Makers track
Assessment	Query live agents, build a working agent	Strategic reasoning through conversation
Prerequisites	A1–A3, then a role track	None
Cost	Basics free; role tracks members-only	Free
You leave with	A working agent	A decision artifact — business case, agency brief, or adoption plan

Assessment follows the same fairness rules as every other module: each module has required demonstrations, identical for every learner, verified by Sage through conversation and recorded with a stable criterion ID. The difference is what you demonstrate — here it is reasoning, never recall and never code.

This credential certifies strategic fluency, not hands-on implementation. It is not a substitute for — or an easier route to — the Basics or Practitioner credentials, which verify that you can query and build agents. If your role is to build, start with Basics.

The three modules

L1 — Agentic advertising and the reversed data flow

What agentic advertising actually is, why it differs from programmatic, and how to explain it to a CMO. ~15 min.

L2 — Your data, brand, and governance as the control surface

The brand-side inputs you control, generation-time brand safety, and why your measurement stack persists. ~15 min.

L3 — Deciding and leading

Brief your team, decide pilot-vs-standardize, and produce a decision artifact. ~15 min.

Reading list

These are the same narratives the protocol publishes for buy-side leaders. Read them in this order and the three modules will feel like a conversation you have already started.

New here? The two essential reads are Monetizing AI surfaces and AdCP vs OpenRTB — the rest are depth you can come back to. You can read everything, and find a partner, without entering the assessment. The credential is optional; the understanding is the point.

How to explain agentic advertising

A cheat-sheet of the framings that land — by audience and by job — for when you have to make a CMO, board, agency, or publisher get it in one meeting.

Monetizing AI surfaces

The buy-side guide for brands, agencies, and SMBs: what you provide, the shift from campaigns to ingredients, and getting started by role.

AdCP vs OpenRTB

How agentic advertising and programmatic are complementary, not competing — your existing stack persists.

The full picture

A walkthrough of every step a media team runs through AdCP, from finding partners to tracking performance.

Content standards

How brand-safety rules are enforced at generation time — before content is shown — rather than verified after the fact.

brand.json

The machine-readable brand identity AI platforms read to sound like your brand.

Catalogs

Why your product feed is the main ingredient — and how it becomes the creative input.

FAQ: buying AI media

Plain answers on partners vs in-house, controlling how the AI talks about your brand, pricing, and how your IAS / DV / Nielsen measurement carries over.

Get started

Start with Addie

Open Addie and say “I’d like to start the Decision-Makers track.” No account required — this track is free.