While we prepared for our inaugural FreeWheel:BUILD summit, I kept thinking of What We’ll Build, a children’s book by Oliver Jeffers that I often read to my kids.
It’s the story of a father and a daughter building together, gathering their tools to create whatever they can imagine. It stuck with me because it reminded me of exactly where I believe our industry is today: we have new tools available that remove the constraints from our imaginations and allow us to build things faster and better than ever before.
AI agents, APIs, automation, and protocols like Model Context Protocol (MCP) are changing how software is built and how people interact with it. Tasks that once required navigating across a complex user interface can now be handled with natural language. Agentic coding models can use APIs to create new applications and enable new and unique workflows.
As a result, we’re no longer constrained by the boundaries of individual products and software and we can focus on the outcomes people want to achieve.
For CTV advertising, that represents an important shift. The next era will not be shaped only by the products we build at FreeWheel but also by what you can build on top of them, and we’re putting that idea at the heart of our product strategy.
From using platforms to building on them
Everyone brings their own expertise, data, business logic, and relationships. At FreeWheel, our job is to create a foundation that allows you to combine those strengths with FreeWheel’s technology.
That means thinking beyond products that can only be used as designed. We want to create capabilities that you can adapt, extend, connect, and incorporate into your own solutions.
Our APIs, MCP Server, Bidding Agents and Partner Portal are important building blocks in that strategy. They can give agencies, publishers, and partners more flexibility to create experiences designed around their businesses.
A partner might use the APIs to extend FreeWheel capabilities with tailored solutions. An agency might connect their AI agent to advertising workflows through our MCP Server. A publisher might combine its own intelligence and business logic with FreeWheel to develop a differentiated solution.
We don’t need to predict or build every application ourselves. We need to provide a trusted foundation that enables you to build what you need.
AI makes extensibility even more important
On their own, LLMs are powerful tools that can generate text, images, or code. But we’re just scratching the surface of what AI can help us create when we give it access to the right tools.
When AI agents can connect to systems and tools, they open the door to new ways of working. Instead of starting with a particular interface and navigating through a predetermined workflow, someone can start by telling an agent their objective and letting it operate in the system to find the best way to accomplish it – answering questions, recommending actions, and eventually even implementing them on a user’s behalf.
That changes how we need to think about product experiences.
The interface is no longer the only way someone interacts with a product. Capabilities need to work across a broader ecosystem of products, data, and agents. In other words, the growth of agentic AI makes extensibility more important, not less. That’s why we’re working to make our API a first-class interface for machines, able to replicate any action taken in our user interface today, and building our MCP server with the domain knowledge to help agents start working quickly.
In What We’ll Build, the tools matter because of what they allow the father and daughter to create. I think about MCP servers in much the same way. The technology itself is only one piece of the story. What matters most is what we can ultimately create with it.
Becoming that kind of platform requires reliable APIs, strong documentation, accessible tools, thoughtful governance, and an ongoing dialogue with you, the people building.
What we’ll build next
We’re early in this transition. We will learn from what you create, where you encounter friction, and what you need from us. A truly extensible platform should evolve through participation from all the partners in the ecosystem around it.
That brings me back to What We’ll Build. My favorite part of the story is the idea of creating something together that neither side could have created alone.
I believe the same will be true for the next chapter of streaming video advertising.
It won’t be built by FreeWheel alone. It requires a community of builders across clients and partners with varying experiences, ingenuity, creativity, and a platform that allows those contributions to come together.
We have new tools and new possibilities. FreeWheel’s focus is to build the foundation and empower all builders to come together, dream, and transform the advertising ecosystem together.
To learn more about how our tools can help you build solutions that set your business apart, visit here.
