AdCP — acquire

Experimental. Brand rights lifecycle (get_rights, acquire_rights, update_rights) is part of AdCP 3.0 as an experimental surface — it may change between 3.x releases with at least 6 weeks’ notice. Sellers implementing any of these tasks MUST declare brand.rights_lifecycle in experimental_features. See experimental status for the full contract.

Binding contractual request to acquire rights from a brand agent. Parallels create_media_buy — select a pricing_option_id from get_rights and provide campaign details. The agent clears against existing contracts and returns terms, generation credentials, and disclosure requirements.

Schema

Request: acquire-rights-request.json
Response: acquire-rights-response.json

Response time

Seconds to minutes for acquired or rejected. The pending_approval status means the rights holder needs to review — resolution may take hours to days.

Quick start

{
  "rights_id": "janssen_likeness_voice",
  "pricing_option_id": "monthly_exclusive",
  "buyer": {
    "domain": "bistro-oranje.nl",
    "brand_id": "bistro_oranje"
  },
  "campaign": {
    "description": "AI-generated video ads for Bistro Oranje steakhouse featuring Daan Janssen",
    "uses": ["likeness", "voice"],
    "countries": ["NL"],
    "format_ids": [
      { "agent_url": "https://creative.adcontextprotocol.org", "id": "video_social_1080x1920" }
    ],
    "estimated_impressions": 50000,
    "start_date": "2026-04-01",
    "end_date": "2026-06-30"
  },
  "revocation_webhook": {
    "url": "https://buyer.bistro-oranje.nl/webhooks/revocation",
    "authentication": {
      "schemes": ["HMAC-SHA256"],
      "credentials": "whsk_bo_abc123...shared_secret_min_32_chars"
    }
  },
  "idempotency_key": "acq_bo_janssen_2026q2_001",
  "push_notification_config": {
    "url": "https://buyer.bistro-oranje.nl/webhooks/adcp/acquire_rights/op_abc123",
    "authentication": {
      "schemes": ["HMAC-SHA256"],
      "credentials": "whsk_bo_xyz789...shared_secret_min_32_chars"
    }
  }
}

Parameters

Request

Field	Type	Required	Description
`rights_id`	string	Yes	Rights offering identifier from `get_rights`
`pricing_option_id`	string	Yes	Selected pricing option
`buyer`	brand-ref	Yes	Buyer’s brand identity
`campaign.description`	string	Yes	How the rights will be used
`campaign.uses`	string[]	Yes	Specific rights uses for this campaign
`campaign.countries`	string[]	No	Countries where the campaign will run
`campaign.format_ids`	format-id[]	No	Creative formats that will be produced
`campaign.estimated_impressions`	integer	No	Estimated total impressions
`campaign.start_date`	date	No	Campaign start date
`campaign.end_date`	date	No	Campaign end date
`revocation_webhook`	push-notification-config	Yes	Webhook for revocation notifications. If the rights holder needs to revoke rights, they POST a revocation-notification to this URL.
`idempotency_key`	string	No	Client-generated key for safe retries. Resubmitting with the same key returns the original response.
`push_notification_config`	push-notification-config	No	Webhook for async status updates if the acquisition requires approval. See push notifications.

Response statuses

The response uses a discriminated union on status:

Status	Description	Key fields
`acquired`	Rights cleared, credentials issued	`terms`, `generation_credentials`, `rights_constraint`, `disclosure`
`pending_approval`	Requires rights holder review	`detail`, `estimated_response_time`
`rejected`	Request denied	`reason`, `suggestions` (optional)

When suggestions is present on a rejected response, the rejection is actionable — the buyer can adjust their request and retry. When suggestions is absent, the rejection is final and the buyer should not retry for this rights/talent combination. This convention applies consistently across acquire_rights rejections, get_rights excluded results, and creative approval rejections.

Request validation

Two campaign-field validations are normative for acquire_rights. Both produce INVALID_REQUEST with the offending field populated and recovery: "correctable" (the buyer can fix the request and retry).

Expired campaign window

Brand agents MUST reject with INVALID_REQUEST and field: "campaign.end_date" when campaign.end_date is in the past at the time of the request. Acquiring rights for a window that has already elapsed produces a zero-duration grant and is almost always a buyer-side bug — surfacing it deterministically is more useful than silently issuing credentials that immediately expire. Unlike create_media_buy, which supports an any_of past-start auto-adjust pattern (a flight can be time-shifted forward without re-licensing), rights grants are not time-shiftable: the contract attaches to the requested period, so reject-only is the correct contract for acquire_rights. Brand agents MAY also reject when campaign.start_date is more than the rights agent’s configured grace window in the past (typically the rights agent rejects start dates earlier than now - 24h since rights cannot be retroactively granted); that decision is contract-specific and SHOULD use field: "campaign.start_date". The end_date < now check is the normative floor.

CPM-priced rights under a governance plan

When the buyer’s request carries an intent-phase governance_context token on the protocol envelope (the buyer’s plan is governed — see Buyer-side governance invocation) and the selected pricing option has model: "cpm", campaign.estimated_impressions is the input the brand agent uses to project commitment against remaining plan budget. To make that projection deterministic across implementations:

Brand agents MUST reject with INVALID_REQUEST and field: "campaign.estimated_impressions" when a governance_context is present, the selected pricing_option.model is "cpm", and campaign.estimated_impressions is either omitted or 0. Implementer-chosen defaults (e.g., assuming 1M impressions) are non-conformant — they hide a policy decision inside each implementation and produce different governance outcomes for identical requests.
When estimated_impressions is provided and non-zero, the projected commitment is (pricing_option.price / 1000) × campaign.estimated_impressions, evaluated in pricing_option.currency. If pricing_option.currency differs from the governance plan’s budget currency (as carried on the plan), the brand agent MUST reject with INVALID_REQUEST and field: "pricing_option_id" — currency conversion is not specified for governance projection, so currency-mismatched offers cannot be cleared against a governed plan.
If the projected commitment exceeds the buyer’s remaining plan budget, the agent MUST reject with INVALID_REQUEST and field: "campaign.estimated_impressions", populating reason with the projected commitment and remaining budget so the buyer can adjust.
Non-CPM pricing options (model: "flat_rate", etc.) commit the flat amount regardless of impression volume; brand agents MUST NOT require estimated_impressions for governance projection on those options. Buyers MAY still provide estimated_impressions for cap-tracking purposes.

Requests without a governance_context token are unaffected by this validation — estimated_impressions remains optional in that case (sellers MAY refuse to transact ungoverned plans as a matter of commercial policy, per Buyer-side governance invocation, but that refusal is independent of this projection rule).

Generation credentials

When rights are acquired, the agent coordinates with LLM providers to issue scoped credentials:

Agent clears the rights against existing contracts
Agent tells the provider (e.g., Midjourney): “Issue a rights key for this talent, licensed to this buyer”
Agent returns the credentials to the buyer

Any creative agent can use these credentials. The LLM provider enforces usage constraints at generation time — the rights agent sets up the permission, the provider is the gatekeeper.

Field	Type	Description
`provider`	string	LLM/generation service (e.g., “midjourney”, “elevenlabs”)
`rights_key`	string	Scoped API key for generating rights-cleared content
`uses`	string[]	Rights uses this credential covers
`expires_at`	datetime	When the credential expires (provider-determined)
`endpoint`	uri	Provider endpoint for rights-scoped generation (optional, uses provider default if omitted)

Rights constraint

When status is acquired, the response includes a rights_constraint object:

Field	Type	Description
`rights_constraint`	object	Pre-built constraint for creative manifests. Contains validity period, country restrictions, and impression cap from agreed terms. Embed directly in the manifest’s `rights` array.

Creative lifecycle

After acquiring rights:

Generate: Creative agent uses generation_credentials to produce content
Manifest: Embed the rights_constraint from the acquire_rights response directly into the creative manifest’s rights array. The rights agent pre-builds this constraint with the correct validity period, country restrictions, and impression cap from the agreed terms.
Approve: POST a creative-approval-request to the approval_webhook URL, authenticating with the provided credentials. The response is a creative-approval-response with status approved, rejected, or pending_review. If pending_review, poll the returned status_url for updates (suggested: every 5 minutes, back off to every 30 minutes after 1 hour).
Serve: Place approved creative via create_media_buy, respecting country and date restrictions
Report: Use report_usage with rights_id for cap tracking and billing

If acquire_rights returns pending_approval and you provided push_notification_config, you’ll receive a webhook notification when the status changes to acquired or rejected. Otherwise, re-call acquire_rights with the same rights_id and idempotency_key after the estimated_response_time interval. Set approval_status: 'pending' on any creative manifests built during this period.

Revocation

If the rights holder needs to revoke rights (talent controversy, contract violation, etc.), they POST a revocation-notification to the buyer’s revocation_webhook, authenticating with the credentials provided at acquisition time. The notification contains an idempotency_key (required, used for deduplication across retries), rights_id, brand_id, reason, and effective_at timestamp. The buyer is responsible for:

Deduplicating by idempotency_key — the same revocation may be delivered multiple times; see Push Notifications — Reliability for the canonical dedup contract
Stopping creative delivery by effective_at
Removing or replacing affected creatives from active campaigns
Ceasing use of generation credentials (providers may also invalidate credentials independently)

Partial revocation is supported — if revoked_uses is present, only those uses are revoked (e.g., voice revoked but likeness remains).

Acknowledging revocations

Return HTTP 200 immediately upon receiving and validating a revocation notification. The rights holder retries on non-2xx responses using exponential backoff (1s, 5s, 30s, 5m, 30m). After 6 failed attempts, the rights holder may escalate through other channels. All webhook signing follows the AdCP push notification signing profile — RFC 9421 by default (rights agent signs with its adcp_use: "webhook-signing" key published at its brand.json agents[] entry), with the deprecated HMAC-SHA256 fallback available when the rights holder populates authentication.credentials on the webhook registration.

Impression caps and overage

When terms.impression_cap is set, it is a soft cap. Delivery is not automatically halted at the cap — the buyer is responsible for monitoring usage via report_usage and managing delivery accordingly. Impressions beyond the cap are billed at terms.overage_cpm. If the rights holder wants a hard cap (no delivery beyond the limit), they specify this in restrictions.

Usage reporting

The usage_reporting_url in the acquired response is a convenience endpoint provided by the rights agent for HTTP-based impression reporting. It accepts the same payload as the report_usage MCP task. Use whichever integration is simpler for your pipeline — the MCP tool for agent-to-agent workflows, or the URL for direct HTTP calls from ad servers.

Renewal and updates

To extend a rights grant, adjust impression caps, change pricing, or pause/resume, use update_rights. Extended grants receive re-issued generation credentials and an updated rights_constraint for re-embedding in manifests.

Next steps

update_rights

Extend, adjust, or pause an existing rights grant.

report_usage

Report impressions against rights grants for billing and cap tracking.

brand.json spec

Rights constraints on creative manifests.

​Schema

​Response time

​Quick start

​Parameters

​Request

​Response statuses

​Request validation

​Expired campaign window

​CPM-priced rights under a governance plan

​Generation credentials

​Rights constraint

​Creative lifecycle

​Revocation

​Acknowledging revocations

​Impression caps and overage

​Usage reporting

​Renewal and updates

​Next steps

update_rights

report_usage

brand.json spec

Schema

Response time

Quick start

Parameters

Request

Response statuses

Request validation

Expired campaign window

CPM-priced rights under a governance plan

Generation credentials

Rights constraint

Creative lifecycle

Revocation

Acknowledging revocations

Impression caps and overage

Usage reporting

Renewal and updates

Next steps