Getting seller-agent ready with Boostr’s Dennis Colón
BY HAZEL BROADLEY, BEELER.TECH
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Holding companies and agencies are starting to lean into buyer agents, which means more budgets will flow through agent-to-agent conversations over the coming months – that’s how fast it’s happening.
In our recent Camp.Fire, Dennis Colón, Head of Agent & Automation Strategy at Boostr, joined Rob to walk us through his checklist for publishers preparing their own seller agents. The discussion focused on three key core areas: building a business case around your existing workflows, deciding how and where to build your agent, and, crucially, setting the guardrails that protect your inventory and revenue.
Start with the workflow, not the technology
Dennis recommends mapping every workflow the agent will touch before anything else, from receiving a brief to proposals, orders, line items, trafficking, reporting and billing. Decide where automation starts and ends, then break the project into phases. Boostr’s first live test was intentionally simple, with one single banner running for one week on a $5,000 budget.
It’s also important to define where people need to stay in the loop to validate and approve the campaign. Rob’s tip is to lead with this when you speak to your sales team, as many people hear “AI” and assume replacement. And of course, those internal conversations take time, so it’s worth starting them early.
Build vs. buy, protocols and placement
If you’re weighing up building your own agent, factor in the ongoing cost of maintenance and versioning, as protocols are evolving quickly. Boostr chose AdCP (Ad Context Protocol), although IAB Tech Lab and Prebid options are now emerging too.
Next, decide where your agent should sit. Dennis favors the OMS because products, pricing and deals already live there, a single deal can push to multiple ad servers (for example, GAM for display and FreeWheel for video) and approvers can work in screens they already use. Connecting directly to an ad server may be faster to set up but it’s more limiting, while routing through an SSP could add another fee.
Rob also warned that letting every SSP run its own agent risks becoming “programmatic on steroids,” making a central orchestration layer essential.
Guardrails, testing and iteration
Never expose all your inventory. Limit which products your agent can sell, anchor it to your rate cards, keep internal and external IDs in sync, and authenticate buyers (for example, an agency acting on behalf of a specific advertiser). Build in business rules such as non-competes and dayparting, and keep an audit trail.
Dennis doesn’t believe agents are ready for price negotiation yet, so for now, focus on formats and packages instead.
When it comes to testing, Boostr even built its own buyer agent to simulate real briefs. Rob added that “vibe coding” won’t cut it here, so bring in engineering and security teams early. When unexpected requests arrive, route them to a person, then expand your agent’s capabilities step by step.
If we get this right now, seller agents can enhance both direct and programmatic revenue, opening doors to new deals without extra headcount. Watch the full video above to get the complete checklist.
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