Prebid's new president is a technologist, and he's talking agentic and Google AdX

Prebid.org has appointed its former longtime chairman Garrett McGrath as its second-ever president, filling a five-month leadership gap after both McGrath and first president Mike Racic stepped down over the summer; OpenX CTO Joel Meyer was elected chairman at the end of August. McGrath, who spent six weeks camping in Wyoming after leaving Magnite, will start September 15 with a 30-day handover before Racic departs October 15. He frames Prebid in existential terms: "If advertising pays for the internet, then Prebid is critical infrastructure for the internet. We're at a place of sea change, at least for the open web, and the importance of Prebid has never been more critical." On the agentic front he is deliberately agnostic: "We will support any agentic layer or any agentic function that the market asks for, and that will always be the case" - spanning Prebid's oversight of AgenticAdvertising.org's sell-side AI agent as well as the IAB Tech Lab's ARTF and AAMP standards. He promises the first 90 days are a "listening and not deciding period." On the Google antitrust remedies, he has no special insight into Judge Leonie Brinkema's decision, but noted it would be quick for Google to build its own Prebid adapter if ordered to integrate AdX into Prebid auctions. He also flagged publisher deal curation and data co-ops, and Prebid's SharedID and User ID Module, as the path into what he called the "audience business."

The crux

Prebid, the open web's monetization plumbing, is being repositioned around the agentic era by a technologist president who is keeping the door open to Google AdX integration - meaning the Google ad tech remedies ruling could directly rewire how publisher auctions are run.

Sell-side read

Publishers should treat the agentic sell-side as a near-term build, not a concept: Prebid's neutrality across ARTF, AAMP and AgenticAdvertising.org means the winning standard will be decided by publisher demand, and participation in curation and shared-ID infrastructure now determines who is visible to the next buying layer.

Watch

Judge Leonie Brinkema's remedies ruling in the Google ad tech case, and whether Google builds a Prebid adapter on the back of it.