International Communications: Updates for Asia-Pacific (APAC) Digital Advertising Community

Hopefully, all of you and your loved ones are safe. In the recent months, some of the countries in the region did face challenging times but salute to the indomitable human spirit, we all have fought back and have emerged stronger and more determined against the pandemic menace. Caution is the keyword, but we all forge ahead nevertheless.

Despite the adversities, the digital advertising industry has maintained its scorching pace and we have quite a few developments and updates to share since we last connected. Here is a summary of our activities and updates:

APAC Webinars on Project Rearc:

With the imminent deprecation of 3^rd Party Cookies in early 2022 and reduced availability of traditional identifiers, we have just wrapped-up an exclusive APAC targeted series of informative webinars anchored by the thought leaders from Alike Audience, Google, ID5, InMobi, Media.net, The Trade Desk and Verizon Media. They shared their perspectives on what we have seen emerging from Project Rearc , as the three future-proof audience targeting approaches. Contextual signaling for first party-unlinked audiences, browser/ OS linked audiences (preferred by the likes of Google and Apple) and explicitly opted in 1:1 linked audiences.

You can visit iabtechlab.com/apac to watch the available recordings.

Project Rearc Update:

Project Rearc , as you are aware from our webinars series (see above), is an industry-wide collaborative initiative to get stakeholders across the digital advertising and media supply chain working together on how we will operate with accountability and privacy first design.

Standards Release

In March 2021, IAB Tech Lab released for comment a portfolio of standards; these outline guidance for privacy-preserving specifications and best practices to support the development of open-source and proprietary solutions for addressability. The following standards were released for public feedback in four parts:

Global Privacy Platform
Accountability Platform
Best Practices for User-Enabled Identity Tokens
Taxonomy and Data Transparency Standards to Support Seller-defined Audience and Context Signaling.

We know our industry wants feasible solutions to preserve addressability with privacy and accountability. We want to know what the future holds! Well, we all have the opportunity to influence the outcome so please review the proposed full standards for responsible addressability and predictable privacy . You can watch previous webinars 2021 Addressability Solutions Videos On-Demand at https://iabtechlab.com/project-rearc/.

Source Code Submission of UID 2.0

The Trade Desk introduced a Unified ID 2.0 (UID 2.0) proposal last summer in the IAB Tech Lab Addressability Working Group. Since then, in May 2021, The Trade Desk has taken an important step by contributing the UID 2.0 source code to emerge as the first industry-driven project to undergo a PRAM (Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media) review process and which adheres to the standards of addressability developed in Project Rearc. This transfer is the culmination of a process to make Unified ID 2.0 open source and to be run and managed independently by the industry.

With the announcement of UID 2.0 source code contribution to the industry, now is the time to make sure your company and teams are aware of the project and how it works and are involved in its ongoing evolution. Major shifts to addressability in digital advertising, coupled with uncertainty and some misinformation about how to weather those shifts, make conditions ripe for confusion and potential misunderstandings. Please do your part to digest the news and share these latest facts about UID 2.0 development within your organization.

It is further anticipated that more solutions will be submitted for review by PRAM and Project Rearc. A number of competing approaches can be taken so a portfolio approach to addressability will be required. There is no “Silver Bullet” solution.

Update on Google’s Approach:

On June 24th, Google in its Chrome blog post announced a delay in the imminent deprecation of third-party identifiers used for targeting and measurement of digital marketing. This watershed event was slated for early 2022 and now has been postponed, possibly to the end of 2023. This gives the industry and regulators more time to adapt to the changes, industry-wide collaboration, and participation in the assimilation of the ideas proposed in the Privacy Sandbox as well as new innovations to develop.

The future of addressability rests on privacy and technical accountability. Our work to re-architect digital advertising for predictable and reliable privacy continues. It is imperative for the industry to remain focused and diligent. We’re as excited as ever to work with the industry on sustainable change. Google’s announcement is important, however, it is critical to recognize that there is a broad spectrum of privacy-fueled changes and regulations that IAB and IAB Tech Lab are working with the industry on to maintain a vibrant and open, ad-supported internet.

This topic would be revisited in our subsequent posts, with more developments and as more clarity emerges.

IAB Tech Lab Supply Chain Validation

IAB Tech Lab has been providing programmatic supply-chain transparency standards (e.g. ads.txt,app-ads.txt and sellers.json) for some time now to help provide clarity into exactly where each ad impression comes from and who interacts with it en-route to a final submission into the ad exchanges. From these exchanges, buyers can also fully interrogate the supply-chain (via the SupplyChain object) and, as a result, optimize their future supply paths.

To better support the adoption and usage of these sell-side tools, IAB Tech Lab has launched theSupply Chain Validation service. This service will provide Supply Chain validation tools to enable publishers and technology vendors to automate the generation, validation, and updates to theirads.txt and sellers.json files and ensure that they can all be cleanly read by programmatic buyers and be retrospectively audited using the SupplyChain object. It will further support publishers with automated checks and cross validation of ads.txt data with sellers.json entries and notifications of any inconsistencies. This will help to ensure the validity of all publisher ads.txt and/or app-ads.txt files implementation and help buyers have more confidence in buying from those publishers, thereby building better trust through the ecosystem.

More such tools will be introduced through the IAB Tech Lab tools portal, including for the recently released buy-side transparency standards – and we’re hopeful that simple validation tools such as this will help to support widespread industry adoption, usage and adherence across APAC. We will be running dedicated webinars to provide more education on the utility of these tools as they are launched.

IAB Tech Lab SKAdNetwork ID List

With the imminent enforcement of Apple’s new privacy features, including the iOS SKAdNetwork feature, IAB Tech Lab has released a new tool for managing and maintaining SKAdNetwork ID list. Advertisers, DSPs, and networks can register their SKAdNetwork IDs and IAB Tech Lab will publish a list of all registered IDs that can be downloaded by app developers and publishers. Networks, DSPs, Advertisers and others who support Apple’s SKAdNetwork API may now register for the IAB Tech Lab list. The list is also now available for download. App publishers or others looking for the list may download it for free as a JSON file within the Tech Lab Tools Portal or access via API endpoint. The file will be updated automatically with each new registration. App developers can use this list data to create their plists. IAB Tech Lab’s Programmatic Supply Chain subgroup focused on the SKAdNetwork solutions is also actively working on a tool that will help simplify plist creation. Look for this tool in the Tech Lab codebank soon.

Connected TV

Advertising spend through Connected Televisions (CTV) has been a success story across most of APAC over the last 9-12 months. The consumption of high-quality long form digital video displayed on a TV screen is outpacing the rest of the ad supported media market, this in turn is driving a significant increase in investment from advertisers.

In terms of a simple definition – a Connected Television is a television set connected to the internet through the built-in capabilities of a smart TV, or else through a streaming device or gaming console – which also enables the viewing of video content to be streamed on the larger screen.

We will be focusing on this area over the coming months to ensure that there is enough education, best practices, recommendations, and standards to help support the continued growth and to help APAC marketers minimize any unnecessary risks in how they access and validate their supply chain.

IAB Tech Lab is currently working on providing some update guidance and we will be running webinars and writing articles to help promote these updates and recommendations. For now, please read and review a recent series written by Amit Shetty.

To Plan Ahead:

State of ads.txt Adoption Validating The Supply Chain (APAC)
Date: August 4, 2021
Time: 10:00AM India / 11:30AM Jakarta / 12:30PM Singapore / 2:30PM Sydney
Learn more in depth about the industry solutions and recommended guidelines. Prepare your business for the major changes ahead.

Brainstorming workshops are being arranged to help identify key priorities for the region.
Dedicated webinars & workshops for specific countries, starting with Indonesia, Malaysia and India.

Please stay connected with us for the latest updates by dropping an email to us at any time atapac_communications@iabtechlab.com. If you have any specific queries you can also always directly reach out to Shivendra Misra or Jonas Jaanimagi.