The Supply Chain & Foundations initiative is focused on enabling programmatic buying and selling of ad inventory at scale. And while most people think of this pillar as OpenRTB, it encompasses much more, including but not limited to ads.txt/app-ads.txt, sellers.json, and IAB Tech Lab Taxonomies.
The objective of the working groups, specifications and thought leadership in this area serves to point the industry in a direction that will facilitate transactions with consistency, efficiency, and transparency.
Supply Chain & Foundations Standards
| Tech Lab Specification | Description | Most Recent Release | Release Version | Working Group Responsible |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ads.cert | "ads.cert” is the umbrella marketing term for an IAB Tech Lab protocol suite that provides an open standard cryptographic security foundation for the programmatic advertising ecosystem. | Jan 2022 | Authenticated Connections v1 | Programmatic Supply Chain Working Group |
| Ad Management API | The Ad Management API specification support all major scenarios known at time of publication for creative approval for both bidding and markup delivery. | Jan 2023 | v1.1 | Programmatic Supply Chain Working Group |
| ads.txt / apps-ads.txt, sellers.json and SupplyChain object | Sell side Transparency Specs making up the OpenRTB SupplyChain object. This enables buyers to see all parties who are selling or reselling a given bid request. | Aug 2022 | v1.1 | Programmatic Supply Chain Working Group |
| Buyers.json and DemandChain Object | Buy Side Transparency Specs that help address the challenges around malvertising and nefarious ads, by providing transparency around the entities that are involved with publishing such ads. | June 2021 | v1.0 | Programmatic Supply Chain Working Group |
| Common Ad Transport Standard (CATS) | CATS aims to address gaps in OpenRTB and VAST by defining an ad request standard that can be used for both RTB and non-RTB use cases, while building on top of existing specifications like AdCOM. | June 2020 | v1.0 | Programmatic Supply Chain Working Group |
| MRAID | MRAID, or “Mobile Rich Media Ad Interface Definitions” is the common API (Application Programming Interface) for mobile rich media ads that will run in mobile apps. | June 2018 | v3.0 | Programmatic Supply Chain Working Group |
| OpenDirect | Programmatic guaranteed API Specification | Sept 2024 | v2.1 | Programmatic Supply Chain Working Group |
| OpenRTB | Programmatic real-time bidding protocol | Sept 2024 | v2.6.x | Programmatic Supply Chain Working Group |
| Safe Ad Container (SHARC) | SHARC is a standardized ‘safe ad container’ API that enables interactive ads to be served across mobile-app, web, and other HTML-enabled environments, in a secure iframe which prevents the ad from being able to access sensitive page and user data. SHARC replaced the SafeFrames and MRAID standards | Dec 2022 | v1.0 | Safe Ad Container Working Group |
| OpenRTB Dynamic Native Ads API | The mission of the OpenRTB Native project is to spur standardization and greater growth in the Real-Time Bidding (RTB) marketplace for Native Ads by providing open industry standards for communication between buyers of advertising and sellers of publisher inventory | July 2017 | 1.2 | Programmatic Supply Chain Working Group |
| Content Taxonomy | 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. | June 2022 | v3.0 | Taxonomy & Mapping Working Group |
| Audience Taxonomy | Standardized naming convention for audience attributes | Apr 2020 | v1.1 | Taxonomy & Mapping Working Group |
| Ad Product Taxonomy | The Ad Product Taxonomy establishes a standardized nomenclature for describing the product or service being advertised. | Oct 2022 | v2.0 | Taxonomy & Mapping Working Group |
Supply Chain & Foundations Working Groups
Supply Chain & Foundations Software
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