The OpenRTB standard, the underpinning of programmatic advertising, never stands still. But with so many incremental changes happening every year, it’s hard to keep track as you are compiling your roadmaps to include the updates most valuable to your business and those of your key partners.
IAB Tech Lab is here to help you navigate the key updates in the world of OpenRTB since January 2024. They are:
- Transparency around ID Provenance
- Retail Media Extension (In Public Comment until Jan 24, 2025)
- Support for Privacy Sandbox
- Addition of Genre and guidance for mapping the field to Taxonomy 3.1 (In Public Comment until Jan 24, 2025)
In each section below we will guide you to the appropriate github link(s), and explain why this is worth considering adding to your 2025 roadmap, if it is not already there.
- Transparency around ID Provenance
What is it: New fields in object:EID have been added to the OpenRTB specification to create transparency throughout the supply chain on the origin of a given ID or set of IDs
Why did Tech Lab do this work: Tech Lab members and industry press raised concerns about the prevalence of “ID Bridging” in the Programmatic Supply Chain that created consternation about who and how IDs were constructed and which party added the ID to the bidstream . The Programmatic Supply Chain working group determined they should solve for creating telemetry to communicate aspects of the identifiers being used in bid requests, so that use of these identifiers can be trusted by all parties in the supply chain.
Why should you adopt: To further create transparency throughout the supply chain on the source of IDs and to mitigate the risk of reputational damage with buy-side partners.
What is the Status: In Production as of September 2024
Where can I learn more: EID object in Github and associated Implementation Guidance
- Product Listing Ad Extension for Retailers
What is it: A community extension has been published in OpenRTB that introduces the prodfeed object (bidrequest.ext.prodfeed). The presence of this object signals that understanding the retailer’s product feed is required to successfully transact on the impression. It includes information about the feed itself, allowed products and categories, and blocked products and categories.
Why did Tech Lab do this work: The explosive growth of Retail (now Commerce) Media Networks has created a need for the ability to programmatically trade the Product Listing Ads that are the bread and butter of retail advertising. This extension makes that possible, while the Retail Media sub working group continues to explore additional opportunities for scale and expansion in 2025.
Why should you adopt: Enabling the Product Feed object in the bidstream for Product Listing Ads creates opportunity for scale and efficiency, by opening these opportunities up to buyers outside of Commerce Media Network walled gardens.
What is the Status: Public Comment until Jan 24, 2025
Where can I learn more: PLA Community Extension in Github
- Ability to test Protected Audience API
What is it: A community extension in OpenRTB that enables testing of the Protected Audience API from Google, which was intended as a replacement for 3rd Party cookies, and is now intended to compensate for those users who may opt out of 3rd Party Cookies when the announced changes are implemented in Chrome; likely sometime in 2026.
Why did Tech Lab do this work: In order to test the efficacy of Google’s Privacy Sandbox and Protected Audiences API as a replacement for 3rd party cookies in the Chrome browser, it was necessary to standardize fields that can map to the PAAPI fields within OpenRTB 2.x. This enabled testing by the industry that resulted from the Privacy Sandbox Fit Analysis report and community feedback.
Why should you adopt: While Google’s pivot to a user choice method of blocking cookies will delay their complete deprecation, based on the experiences with Safari it is likely that large numbers of consumers will indeed opt-out, creating the likelihood of significant signal loss. This makes continued testing, adoption, and feature enhancements to Privacy Sandbox, and other Proprietary Ad Platform systems, essential for the future success and growth of programmatic trading on the open web. Join the working group to help contribute.
What’s the Status: In Production with incremental additions to come
Where can I learn more: Protected Audience Support in Github
- Introducing CTV Genres and Taxonomy 3.0
What is it: New attributes `genres` and `gtax` have been added to Object: Video in OpenRTB 2.x
Why did Tech Lab do this work: As more CTV transactions take place programmatically there is a need to have an enumerated way to describe the genre of the program being watched. The legacy ‘genre’ field in OpenRTB is free-form text which creates significant opportunity for confusion, signal waste, and difficulty making brand suitability decisions programmatically. This is solved when using a standardized set of values within a defined Taxonomy. The ‘gtax’ field was added due to the variance in keywords used to describe the genre of a piece of content across the industry. With the additional mapping guidance accompanying this release even companies using the deprecated Content Taxonomy 1.0 for other classifications of their inventory, can take advantage of the content taxonomy 3.1 genre list for this specific field.
Why should you adopt: CTV inventory continues to grow, but buyers want to ensure that their ads are appearing against the content they deem appropriate and relevant to their advertisement without publishers having to risk sending more premium information to buyers. Moving to a standard taxonomy increases confidence and thus spending in this growing area.
What’s the Status: Public Comment until Jan 24, 2025
Where can I learn more: https://iabtechlab.com/standards/taxonomy-updates-202412