The Content Taxonomy provides a “common language” that can be used when describing content. Typical uses of the content taxonomy are contextual targeting and brand safety.
February 11, 2026
Migration from Content Taxonomy 2.x to 3.0 is here — and it’s not optional. Whether you’re an SSP, DSP, publisher, or brand safety vendor, keeping your classification pipelines compliant with IAB’s latest standards is table stakes.
Mixpeek has donated an open-source IAB Tech Lab Taxonomy Mapper — a free tool that makes upgrading painless. It’s open source, runs locally, and leverages multiple AI techniques to deliver accurate, confidence-scored mappings.
The IAB Mapper is a utility for converting 2.x category codes into 3.0 equivalents.
You can watch a short video on How It Works in the GitHub.
The 3.0 Taxonomy expands coverage from ~400 categories to 1,500+, and 2.x is being deprecated. With this tool you can upgrade and save your team weeks of manual work!
The 3.1 version of the content taxonomy was open for public comment until Jan 24, 2025. This latest version contains an update to the ‘genre’ category to include Thriller.
The following table provides links to previous versions of the Content Taxonomy.
| Version | Release Date | Additional Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Content Taxonomy 3.1 | December 2024 | |
| Content Taxonomy 3.0 and Descriptive Vectors | June 2022 | This version includes updates to better support a variety of areas – News, Video/CTV content, Podcasts, Radio, Games and App stores. The changes include updates to “Aboutness categories” as well as to the additional “vectors”. This update includes some deletions which make this version of the taxonomy non-backwards compatible with previous releases. |
| Content Taxonomy 2.2 | December 2020 | |
| Content Taxonomy 2.1 | October 2020 | |
| Content Taxonomy 2.0 | November 2017 | |
| Content Taxonomy 1.0 | Deprecated and should NOT be used for content categorization in the absence of SCD flags. More information can be found here about SCD flags available in updated Taxonomy version |
The following table provides links to all mappings associated with the Content Taxonomy.
| Mapping | Release Date |
|---|---|
| CTV Genre Mapping | December 2024 |
| Podcast Genre Mapping | December 2024 |
| Ad Product 2.0 --> Content 1.0 | December 2024 |
| Content 1.0 --> Ad Product 2.0 | November 2023 |
| Content 1.0 --> Content 2.0 | November 2023 |
| Content 1.0 --> Content 2.1 | November 2023 |
The Content Taxonomy has associated implementation guidance to ease the transition away from Content Taxonomy 1.0 as it has been deprecated since 2020. See below.