Ad Ops Insider
Description: Ad Ops Insider is the leading ad operations blog and explains the technical side of how online advertising works.
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September 16, 2017
Ads.txt is an IAB Tech Lab project that was created to fight inventory fraud in the digital advertising industry. The idea is simple; publishers put a file on their server that says exactly which companies they sell their inventory through. The file lists partners by name, but also includes the publisher’s account ID. This is the same ID buyers see in a bid request, which they can use as a key for campaign targeting.
Buyers use a web crawler to download all the ads.txt files and the information contained within on a regular basis and use it to target their campaigns. This means buyers know that if they bid on request that comes from an authorized ID, it’s coming from a source the publisher trusts or has control over. Buyers seem to be taking the idea seriously, too. Just a week ago Digitas published an open letter on Digiday saying they won’t buy from any publisher without an ads.txt file.
Ad Ops Insider