The Ad Product Taxonomy was launched by IAB Tech Lab in July 2022 to establish a standardized nomenclature for describing the product or service being advertised. It aims to provide publishers with stronger control over the types of ads that get delivered via automated channels.
It joins sister taxonomies managed by IAB Tech Lab – the Content Taxonomy 3.0 and Audience Taxonomy 1.1. You can view them all and monitor any updates by following the Taxonomy GitHub Repository.
We have released Implementation Guidance for Ad Product 2.0 to ease the transition to the updated taxonomy. We have also released a mapping from Content Taxonomy 1.0 to Ad Product 2.0.
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.
The Ad Product Taxonomy 1.1 update was meant to help the industry better navigate new regulations focused on restricting the promotion of foods that are high in fat, sugar, and salt (HFSS), but was not adopted. Implementors should use Ad Product 2.0 instead.