Request for Comment: Summary of changes for Native 1.2

[jenn...@iab.com]

Hello OpenRTB,

We have discussed the following proposals in the Native subgroup. Looking for comments on any of the changes we expect for Native version 1.2

RFC Item #1 - AdChoices & Privacy flags (Detailed proposal here from Pierre Nicolas @ Criteo)

Companies that engage in behavioral advertising have a legal obligation to inform users about the targeting they’re being subjected to, as well as offer the ability to opt out. Before bidding on a native placement, a buyer must know whether they will be able to do so. Solution: Add "privacy" field to native markup bid request and bid response objects.

RFC Item #2 - Third Party Ad Serving support (Detailed proposal here from Byron Ellis @ Spongecell and Curt Larson @ Sharethrough)

Quickly - the idea is to allow DCO and other use cases of third-party ad-serving to buy native.  This is presently impossible since the DCO provider is divorced from the bidder, and the bidder must respond with the actual creative assets in the current spec.  This change principally involves the bidder responding with a URL where the native object can be found, rather than the native object itself, in the bid response.  There are, unfortunately, some other changes required to make this work since that de-coupling of request/response wasn't contemplated in the way the native spec was initially designed (specifically with regards to the reliance of ID passing between request/response).  These changes involve the response including more information and options so the supply source can understand and choose the appropriate asset without the benefit of the ID.

RFC Item #3 - Deprecating fields from version 1.0 (Details here, written up by Curt Larson)

In the native 1.1 spec, we replaced adunit and layout with what we believed were better and more descriptive fields: context and placement type. We marked adunit and layout 'to be deprecated' in 1.1 and now it's theoretically time to do it in 1.2.  This means people can continue using them under 1.0 or 1.1 but to officially move to 1.2 would need to stop and use the new fields exclusively.  Request feedback on whether supply/demand sides have moved to the new standard, and if there is any information to be missed by deprecating it in 1.2. 

To give comments, please write on this google group discussion here, or email me at jenn...@iabtechlab.com. 

Thank you

[boke...@gmail.com]

Not sure if it's too late to give feedback but:

• I think the AdChoices idea makes sense - can we extend it to all formats and not just native? Seems like it would make life a lot easier and make creatives less complex. I am probably just dreaming.
  
• I'm worried that the 3PAS spec is going to make it very difficult to execute creative exclusions for publishers. For instance, if I have a sponsorship running for Sony on my home page and I don't want to allow any Samsung assets to render, do I have to build a separate layer to parse the response from the 3PAS to see if it meets my requirements? And if it doesn't, what do I do... bounce back and run another call through my SSP. I think the DCO call has to be made server-side from the SSP (or DSP). This is already happening and seems to work fine, and just means the 3PAS needs to synch cookies.

[jenn...@iab.com]

Not too late for feedback!

- AdChoices proposal had most use cases in native. We could formalize in native and if people are implementing as an extension to other formats, then we can go through the process of formalizing this field in the larger spec.

- Thinking about solutions to your comment on 3PAS, will get back to you on this...

[Ian Trider]

This is one of those cases where VAST and OpenRTB overlap by the way -- VAST 3+ has the "Icons" element intended for including AdChoices. So there would be ambiguity..

[jgwi...@vindicotech.com]

Native ads have "Sponsored" written all over them, but AdChoices is for opting out of behavioral tracking.  Due to the nature of Native (ads "hidden" in real content), I think providing/supporting the AdChoices Icon sooner rather than later is important.

Can we make sure AdChoices support is in the next 1.2 version of the Native Ads spec?

J