In 2023 an update to the ifa_type ext was ratified by the Programmatic Supply Chain Working Group. That update clarified the purpose of the attribute to mean it was the type of entity in the bidstream that was declaring the device’s Identifier for Advertising (IFA). In its original form, the attribute included both the type of entity (e.g. SSP or device) and in some cases named commercial entities with specific ifas. At the time of original release (2018), the notion of keeping that list up to date seemed reasonable.
That said… this is AdTech and if there’s one rule in this business, it is that there are ALWAYS new entities with their own version of whatever the thing in question is. By rescoping the field to mean only the persona that generated the IFA, keeping a list of commercial entities became moot while ensuring the attribute itself stayed relevant and useful to implementers in perpetuity.
As is sometimes the case with outdated artifacts, the original .pdf continued to live on the Tech Lab website. We continue to get a few questions a week from implementers asking very reasonable implementation questions on how to do the thing the .pdf told them to do and pointing them to the extension instead where the information that is still relevant lives.
Now, all the specs are in the same place (GitHub), all the GitHub repos are much easier to update, and we have the added bonus of avoiding confusing people with the roughly eleventy billion .pdfs floating about. LO HICIMOS!
Hillary Slattery
Sr. Director, Programmatic, Product Management
IAB Tech Lab