Standards, Guidelines & Best Practices

Curated Audiences (formerly Seller Defined Audiences or SDA) is an addressability specification incubated within Project Rearc. It allows publishers, DMPs and data providers to scale first-party data responsibly and reliably without data leakage or reliance on deprecated IDs and/or new, untested technologies.

Originally published in Dec 2018, and deprecated in 2023, the Guidelines for Identifier for Advertising (IFA) on OTT platforms are recommendations on how to maintain a high-quality advertising experience within over-the-top television (OTT) environments. Those technical guidelines provide instructions on best practices for delivering targeted ads, as well as controlling ad frequency and rotation across … Continued

The Content Taxonomy provides a “common language” that can be used when describing content. Typical uses of the content taxonomy are contextual targeting and brand safety.

The Open Measurement Software Development Kit (OM SDK) is designed to facilitate third party viewability and verification measurement for ads served to web video and mobile app environments. The IAB Open Measurement SDK (OM SDK) offers common code and libraries for facilitating third-party access to measurement data. Sites and apps that integrate the OM SDK … Continued

The Data Deletion Request Framework is a specification that facilitates the handling of deletion requests in accordance with the changing landscape of consumer privacy rights as dictated by privacy laws. The Framework builds upon IAB Tech Lab’s portfolio of privacy compliance initiatives, including the Global Privacy Platform, the Accountability Platform, and the Privacy Taxonomy project. … Continued

The IAB Tech Lab Data Transparency standard establishes minimum disclosure requirements for audience data providers

The IAB Tech Lab Data Transparency standard establishes minimum disclosure requirements for audience data providers. These disclosure requirements are intended to establish a baseline level of transparency for data buyers about aspects of data collection, processing, and modeling that inform data quality and applicability, regardless of buyer use case.

“ads.cert” is the umbrella marketing term for an IAB Tech Lab protocol suite that provides an open standard cryptographic security foundation for the programmatic advertising ecosystem. Using these solutions helps participants assure that they obtain genuine ad trade opportunities that have been secured against misrepresentation. Any party buying, selling, or facilitating ad trades can deploy … Continued

The IAB New Ad Portfolio replaces all the previous creative display guidelines for mobile and desktop – including the Universal Ad Package (UAP), rich media units, and other ad units’ related guidance. Streamline design and cross-screen production in this mobile world.

Standardizing how requests (and responses) are made is key to allow any two entities to “speak” to each other. While OpenRTB exists as a standard for transacting ad inventory in an RTB transaction, there are a number of other scenarios where no standard exists. For example, making a subsequent request for ad creatives (whether in … Continued

buyers.json and DemandChain Object are two new buy-side transparency standards being introduced by the IAB Tech Lab (the third being the Ad Product Taxonomy). These standards help address the challenges around malvertising and nefarious ads, by providing transparency around the entities that are involved with publishing such ads. The first, buyers.json, is a mechanism for … Continued

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. The mission of the ads.txt project is simple: Increase transparency in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. ads.txt stands … Continued

The IAB Tech Lab has introduced two new technical specifications aimed at increasing trust of the supply chain, specifically on the supply-side of real-time bidding and programmatic buying. The first, sellers.json, enables buyers to verify the entities who are either direct sellers of, or intermediaries in the selected digital advertising opportunity for purchase. The second, … Continued

SHARC is a standardized ‘safe ad container’ API that enables interactive ads to be served across mobile-app, web, and other HTML-enabled environments, in a secure iframe which prevents the ad from being able to access sensitive page and user data.

The SafeFrame Implementation Working Group had worked on and released for public comment SafeFrame 2.0. However, as part of the public comment period, enough feedback came back for features we could not fully support on the current SafeFrame framework. One of the key principles for the version 2.0 update was to enable the cross-platform use … Continued

Dynamic Ad content standards is a structured system of meta-data for creative components and asset variations of the creative components that may be used in an advertisement. It also defines a standard delivery structure that is extensible for custom asset types.

Curated Audiences (formerly Seller Defined Audiences or SDA) is an addressability specification incubated within Project Rearc. It allows publishers, DMPs and data providers to scale first-party data responsibly and reliably without data leakage or reliance on deprecated IDs and/or new, untested technologies.

Originally published in Dec 2018, and deprecated in 2023, the Guidelines for Identifier for Advertising (IFA) on OTT platforms are recommendations on how to maintain a high-quality advertising experience within over-the-top television (OTT) environments. Those technical guidelines provide instructions on best practices for delivering targeted ads, as well as controlling ad frequency and rotation across … Continued

The Content Taxonomy provides a “common language” that can be used when describing content. Typical uses of the content taxonomy are contextual targeting and brand safety.

The Open Measurement Software Development Kit (OM SDK) is designed to facilitate third party viewability and verification measurement for ads served to web video and mobile app environments. The IAB Open Measurement SDK (OM SDK) offers common code and libraries for facilitating third-party access to measurement data. Sites and apps that integrate the OM SDK … Continued

The Data Deletion Request Framework is a specification that facilitates the handling of deletion requests in accordance with the changing landscape of consumer privacy rights as dictated by privacy laws. The Framework builds upon IAB Tech Lab’s portfolio of privacy compliance initiatives, including the Global Privacy Platform, the Accountability Platform, and the Privacy Taxonomy project. … Continued

The IAB Tech Lab Data Transparency standard establishes minimum disclosure requirements for audience data providers

The IAB Tech Lab Data Transparency standard establishes minimum disclosure requirements for audience data providers. These disclosure requirements are intended to establish a baseline level of transparency for data buyers about aspects of data collection, processing, and modeling that inform data quality and applicability, regardless of buyer use case.

“ads.cert” is the umbrella marketing term for an IAB Tech Lab protocol suite that provides an open standard cryptographic security foundation for the programmatic advertising ecosystem. Using these solutions helps participants assure that they obtain genuine ad trade opportunities that have been secured against misrepresentation. Any party buying, selling, or facilitating ad trades can deploy … Continued

The IAB New Ad Portfolio replaces all the previous creative display guidelines for mobile and desktop – including the Universal Ad Package (UAP), rich media units, and other ad units’ related guidance. Streamline design and cross-screen production in this mobile world.

Standardizing how requests (and responses) are made is key to allow any two entities to “speak” to each other. While OpenRTB exists as a standard for transacting ad inventory in an RTB transaction, there are a number of other scenarios where no standard exists. For example, making a subsequent request for ad creatives (whether in … Continued

buyers.json and DemandChain Object are two new buy-side transparency standards being introduced by the IAB Tech Lab (the third being the Ad Product Taxonomy). These standards help address the challenges around malvertising and nefarious ads, by providing transparency around the entities that are involved with publishing such ads. The first, buyers.json, is a mechanism for … Continued

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. The mission of the ads.txt project is simple: Increase transparency in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. ads.txt stands … Continued

The IAB Tech Lab has introduced two new technical specifications aimed at increasing trust of the supply chain, specifically on the supply-side of real-time bidding and programmatic buying. The first, sellers.json, enables buyers to verify the entities who are either direct sellers of, or intermediaries in the selected digital advertising opportunity for purchase. The second, … Continued

SHARC is a standardized ‘safe ad container’ API that enables interactive ads to be served across mobile-app, web, and other HTML-enabled environments, in a secure iframe which prevents the ad from being able to access sensitive page and user data.

The SafeFrame Implementation Working Group had worked on and released for public comment SafeFrame 2.0. However, as part of the public comment period, enough feedback came back for features we could not fully support on the current SafeFrame framework. One of the key principles for the version 2.0 update was to enable the cross-platform use … Continued

Dynamic Ad content standards is a structured system of meta-data for creative components and asset variations of the creative components that may be used in an advertisement. It also defines a standard delivery structure that is extensible for custom asset types.