To purge fake ad sellers from digital advertising, IAB Tech Lab launches ads.txt

The IAB Tech Lab has introduced a tool to help eliminate counterfeit and unauthorized inventory by cutting illegitimate sellers out of the supply chain.

Called ads.txt, the solution enables publishers to declare publicly which sellers are authorized to sell their inventory in a file posted to their domains. Like a robot.txt file, ads.txt ensures trust because the file must be posted to the site by the publisher. Publishers can also update the text file easily with data available in the OpenRTB protocol.

Programmatic buyers can then scan ads.txt files to compile lists of authorized sellers for each publisher in order to screen out untrustworthy impressions and verify the authenticity of impressions being sold. Ads.txt was developed by the IAB OpenRTB Working Group, and in addition to publishers, it supports ad networks, exchanges and content syndication partnerships in which multiple authorized sellers represent the same inventory.

To learn more about this initiative, read the full article on MarTech Today.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

As Third Door Media’s paid media reporter, Ginny Marvin writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She provides search marketing and demand generation advice for ecommerce companies and can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.