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 advertising systems and other intermediaries between payor and publisher to publicly declare the buyers that they represent. Armed with this information, publishers and Supply Side Platforms (SSPs) can more easily identify the sources of malvertising attacks, identify problematic buyers across multiple demand sources, and take appropriate action to protect themselves and their users.
The second, DemandChain Object, enables sellers to see all parties who are involved in buying the creative embedded in a given bid response. This extension object can be used with OpenRTB 2.x or OpenRTB 3.0 for real-time bidding.
In many ways, buyers.json and DemandChain Object can be considered the mirror images of sellers.json and SupplyChain Object, with the goal of providing a similar level of transparency to publishers, just as sellers.json & SupplyChain Object had provided transparency to buyers.
These specifications were released in June 2021, however we still welcome feedback, so please feel free to email us at support@iabtechlab.com.
Read the blog post announcing the 1.0 release of buyers.json and DemandChain object.
Read the press release announcing the public comment release of buyers.json and DemandChain Object.