Ads.txt - Authorized Digital Sellers for public comment until June 19

[jenn...@iab.com]

As part of a broader effort to eliminate the ability to profit from counterfeit inventory in the open digital advertising ecosystem, Ads.txt provides a mechanism to enable content owners to declare who is authorized to sell their inventory. 

Press coverage here: https://adexchanger.com/ad-exchange-news/domain-spoofing-gone-ads-txt-will-filter-imposter-sites/

Spec for review is available here: https://iabtechlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/IABTechLabOpenRTBAds-txt_Spec_PublicComment_Draft.pdf

Additional implementation and support materials are available here: https://iabtechlab.com/ads-txt/

Feel free to respond in thread below or email Ope...@iabtechlab.com with comments. We will host webinars for Questions and Buyer implementation guidance next week. (More details to come)

Big thank you to leading contributors, as listed in the spec. 

Thanks,
Jennifer 

[Dan Bowtell]

Ads.txt seems like a great idea but I wonder if there is a better implementation than expecting all DSPs to implement crawlers and monitor. Why isn't there a single crawler that monitors all SSP auctions and grants an IAB (or other independent) accreditation?

That would encourage SSPs to better vet inventory as more is at stake and give advertiser's more trust if they know only accredited SSPs are being bought on. It also saves the same development work being done by each DSP.

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[boke...@gmail.com]

I think it's unrealistic that every publisher is going to create and maintain an ads.txt file. This could mean we have a new feature for ad tech platforms that allows easy maintenance of ads.txt files... but aren't those the same ad tech platforms that we don't trust to do basic vetting of the same exact publishers?

In 2015, AppNexus banned second-order resale from the platform (two or more hops between a buyer and a seller). This eliminated a huge number of impressions but not very much absolute spend. Quality metrics shot up because we took away the insertion points where fraud was entering the system. If we saw NHT, it was either from -the- intermediary or from the publisher. If the former, we would warn them and then suspend them from the platform. If the latter, we would warn them and then stop buying from the pub. My take is that it has been extremely effective. We also put in place very strict standards for new intermediaries on the platform.

Let's use this opportunity to eliminate re-resale. The "resale" flag of ads.txt should be removed. This is a wonderful moment to require the industry to go direct. There is very little downside here - we are still allowing SSPs/exchanges as *the* intermediary.

Then, ads.txt can become a signal of bad intermediary behavior. Let's say 100 pubs eagerly implement ads.txt and keep it up to date. Any resale of those domains is now an IQ (inventory quality) violation on AppNexus and grounds to suspend an intermediary. Other DSPs can do the same, since it's a much lower bar to manage what amounts to a small labeled data set than an industry-wide requirement. No intermediary, ad network, or SSP can survive without a large cross-section of pubs, and the more pubs implement and maintain ads.txt the better - but it won't get to 100%.

In summary: please eliminate the resale flag, acknowledge that this will destroy some middlemen that resell a lot (I'll increase my IAB dues proportionately so Randall doesn't freak out) and then we've massively cleaned up the industry without adding huge layers of complexity.

[Neal Richter]

Brian,

  Thanks for the comments. I'm going to interpret this as a strong vote that you'll support it and wish to go farther, which is your decision as an implementer.  Which is the point of providing the information and allowing a buyer to reconcile.

  Re the issue of dropping RESELLER from Field #3, I'm going to defer to the IAB as this smells like a policy decision by a trade body (IAB), yet it sounds overly prescriptive to me?

Again, thanks for weighing in!

-Neal

Dr. Neal Richter, PhD

Hebbian Labs  | http://hebbian.io

M 406-579-2887

Twitter @nealrichter

[Paul Bannister]

Adding my comments (which I also emailed in):

I’ve read the draft and press surrounding ads.txt and think overall it’s a great idea.  One other issue I’d like to bring up is situations where a third-party is the exclusive representative of all media on a site but is not actually an exchange – e.g,. what we do for bloggers as well as other companies like Mediavine, hashtag labs, Marfeel, Curse, etc.

 

Using our company as an easy case, we represent 100% of media on about 1500 sites, so we run all of the header bidders and exchanges (and ad server) for those sites, but don’t control the hosting.  We can probably get ads.txt installed on each site as a one-off, but keeping it updated as we add/remove exchange partners might be extremely cumbersome. 

 

One idea I had thought of was to allow ads.txt to pass responsibility to another authority, so for example:

 

Bloggerdomain.com/ads.txt content:

Authority: cafemedia.com

 

Cafemedia.com/ads.txt content:

<normal ads.txt>

 

That way, we could keep the ads.txt that was a master file for all of our sites in one place and it would be valid for all of the sites we represent.  This might also solve the subdomain/large publisher issue that is brought up in the draft spec.  I am not sure if this presents security risks somehow, but I can’t think of any yet. 

 

Appreciate any feedback and happy to answer any questions.  Thanks!

[Mark McEachran]

Better still would be something like this:

Bloggerdomain.com/ads.txt content:
Authority: cafemedia.com

Bloggerdomain2.com/ads.txt content:
Authority: cafemedia.com
 
Cafemedia.com/ads.txt content:

Authorization: [

{

domain: Bloggerdomain.com,

ads: [

<normal ads.txt>

]

}, 

{

domain: Bloggerdomain2.com,

ads: [

<another normal ads.txt, but with a different set of vendors>

]

},

etc...

[Alanna Gombert]

Hi all,

I'm excited to see the support for ads.txt. In terms of removing RESELLER, OpenRTB needs to be fair and open, especially as it is ultimately governed by a standards body. The process for industry standards and tools creation needs to be as open and inclusive as possible otherwise we wade into anti-competitive and even potentially anti-trust scenarios. It is important to make sure we never consciously remove a market participant from a standard. 

Happy to chat more about this. This is an important topic that we all need to be aware of. 

A

[Alanna Gombert]

And to be clear, ads.txt, sellers.txt etc. fall under the below governance rules as they are industry tools. 

[Paul Bannister]

Thanks for the heads up!

 

Paul Bannister EVP, Strategy O: 646.435.6644 M: 917.873.8680 pa...@cafemedia.com

AdThrive •  CafeMom •  MamásLatinas  •   Revelist  •  Vivala •  Baby Name Wizard 

 

 

From: Jennifer Derke [mailto:jenn...@iabtechlab.com]
Sent: Monday, June 26, 2017 3:52 PM
To: Paul Bannister <pa...@cafemedia.com>; openr...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [openrtb-dev] Re: Ads.txt - Authorized Digital Sellers for public comment until June 19

 

Paul,
This specific case will get addressed in future version, as we look into delegating authority to a third-party to publish the data. For now, each site would host their ads.txt file. Redirects are not supported.

-Jennifer

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