The next phase of programmatic isn’t about adding more tools or introducing more complexity. It’s about something more fundamental: moving intelligence closer to the impression.
As data, models, and compute converge, the open internet has an opportunity to unlock outcome-level performance without giving up control to walled gardens. This shift marks a meaningful evolution in how decisions are made across the programmatic ecosystem and sets the stage for agentic sell-side decisioning.
At IAB’s 2026 Annual Leadership Meeting (ALM), Andrew Casale, president and CEO of Index Exchange, joined IAB CEO David Cohen to explore how agentic sell-side decisioning is enabling faster, more sustainable outcomes on the open internet.
From sell-side decisioning to agentic systems
Just a year ago, sell-side decisioning emerged as a way to move decisions earlier in the supply chain, closer to where inventory, context, and supply-side signals already live.
What began with curation quickly expanded into impression-level optimization. The result was clear: The closer intelligence moved to the impression, the more effective it became.
Agentic decisioning builds on that. Rather than routing intelligence downstream, it allows decisions to originate at the impression itself, where models, data, and execution can operate together in real time.
“There is so much rich signal in the impression itself, that doesn’t always get to the buy side. And when you couple that with decisioning, you actually have this really exciting environment for innovation. You have uncapped scale. You have massive access to signals, and you can innovate rapidly.”
Andrew Casale, President and CEO
Index Exchange
Why proximity matters: speed, cost, and sustainability
The industry often talks about ad tech tax. But there’s another cost that’s less visible and increasingly important: the cloud tax.
Traditional architectures rely on outbound calls to external infrastructure, including cloud providers, remote compute environments, and third-party services, to evaluate each impression. Every hop adds latency, cost, and inefficiency.
“[The cloud tax] consumes so many operating costs that hamper innovation and hold performance back. And it’s now starting to be turned on its head as we move to a model where code runs really, really fast at the edge of the impression through containerization.”
Andrew Casale, President and CEO
Index Exchange
Agentic sell-side decisioning flips that model. Containerized models can run directly on top of the exchange, supported by shared infrastructure. By eliminating unnecessary outbound requests, decisioning becomes faster, compute costs fall, and the system itself becomes simpler by design.
Advanced algorithms trained on marketing data don’t inherently belong to any one platform. Once trained, that intelligence is capable of operating across environments rather than being locked into a single ecosystem.
Agentic sell-side decisioning brings that portability closer to reality, powering sophisticated optimization while maintaining flexibility, transparency, and long-term control.
With intelligence operating where decisions are made, the ecosystem can compete on what matters most: results.
Shared standards, shared progress
Major shifts in programmatic have only succeeded when the industry moves together. Agentic decisioning is no exception.
Frameworks built in isolation stall progress. Industry collaboration creates standards that unlock speed, interoperability, and scale across the ecosystem.
Shared frameworks, containerized models, and interoperable infrastructure are essential to realizing the full potential of agentic systems.
“We do need to come together as an industry. We need to agree on the same set of standards, and we have to do it the same way, or this takes forever. We over complicate everything, and we end up just burning years.”
Andrew Casale, President and CEO
Index Exchange
Shaping what comes next
If the goal is simply to make today’s system marginally more efficient, the industry risks falling behind. The real opportunity lies in rethinking how decisions are made altogether.
Agentic sell-side decisioning represents a shift from downstream optimization to upstream intelligence—one with the potential to reshape performance, efficiency, and control across the open internet.
“I really hope in a year’s time or two years’ time, the open internet stops apologizing and starts gaining meaningful share. As we get together as an ecosystem, when we gain the advantage of some of this incredible modern technology, we can grow the pie that we really need to grow to fund incredible content.”
Andrew Casale, President and CEO
Index Exchange
Done right, this next phase won’t just improve programmatic advertising. It will help build a stronger, more competitive, and more sustainable open internet.
Learn more about how you can activate intelligence on the sell side and drive stronger outcomes with sell-side decisioning and agentic AI solutions.
