What is Ads.txt? It’s working and benefits for Publishers

Introduction:

Ads.txt or Authorized Digital Sellers is an initiative taken by an IAB Tech Lab that helps in making sure that the digital ad inventory is sold only by sellers, such as AdSense which the company has recognized as authorized. Creating an ads.txt file gives owners more control over who is permitted to sell ads on their site and helps in preventing fake inventory from being given to advertisers.

Ads.txt can assist the buyers to see inventory and assist in receiving more of the advertiser’s spend that may have otherwise gone towards that inventory. Video publishers need ads.txt to be free from frauds.

Ads.txt supports three types of supplier relationships:

• Domain owners who sell on interchange through their accounts.
• Sale houses and Networks that sell on behalf of domain owners.
• CSP or Content syndication partnerships where many sellers that are authorized represent the same inventory.

What Is The Ads.Txt Project?

The mission is simple- to increase the transparency in the ecosystem of programmatic advertising. It is a simple, secure, and flexible way that distributors and publishers can use to publicly list the companies they want to sell their digital inventory to. This gives control to publishers over their inventory in the market. The people selling counterfeit inventory will not make it to the ecosystem. This also permits brands to know that they are buying authentic publisher’s inventory.

How Does Ads.Txt Work?

Ads.txt works by making a publicly accessible record of authorized digital sellers for the inventory that the buyers can see if they wish to buy the inventory. First, the publishers must make their list of sellers and add to their domain. The buying party can search the web for publisher ad.txt files to make a list of authorized sellers for all the publishers that were participating. Then the buying party can generate a filter to match their list compared to the data given by the OpenRTB bid request.

Statistics:

By Nov 2017, a little rise that is: 44% of publishers had ads.txt files. 90,000 sites were using ads.txt from 3,500 in Sept. 2017, according to Pixalate. Of the top 1,000 sites that had sold programmatic ads, 57% had ads.txt files compared to 16% in Sept. as per Pixalate.

Google has been an active part of ads.txt and keeps pushing for widespread, faster adoption by publishers. From the end of October 2017, Video 360 and Google Display only buys inventory from publishers that are recognized as authorized sellers in publisher’s ads.txt, when a file is available. Ads.txt may become an essential part of Display and video 360.

Benefits for Publishers: 

Now, Digital sellers can openly list approved retailers of their ad inventory while having ads.txt can help in avoiding illegitimate instances of fraudulent purchases of inventories.

Ads.txt also assists ad buyers to verify the dealers and therefore prevent unwanted traffic purchases. It helps the consumer in detecting and preventing occurrences of unwanted imitations.

With VDO.AI’S experts, a new dimension can be added to the advertising campaigns by getting an upgrade on the programmatic supply chain which increases the efficiency of ad buying.

File Format:

The ads.txt specification has certain formatting rules, which means it can only contain three types of records: data records, comments, and variables. An ads.txt file can have any number of records. No restriction on that.

The ads.txt file format must be followed, a range of validation, collaboration, and management tools have become accessible to help make sure that ads.txt files are created correctly.

The latest specification v1.02 asks to use a placeholder record to explain the intent of an empty ads.txt

Conclusion:

In conclusion, Ads.txt or Authorized Digital Sellers is an initiative taken by IAB Tech Lab that helps to make sure that digital ad inventory is sold only by sellers. It increases transparency in the ecosystem of programmatic advertising. It works by making a publicly accessible record of authorized digital sellers for inventory that buyers can see. By November 2017, 44% of publishers had ads in ad.txt files. Google has been an active part of ads.txt.

It may become an essential part of Display and video 360. There is a lot of benefit for publishers as they can avoid fraudulent occurrences thanks to ads.txt. The list of retailers helps both the publishers as well as the buyers. It has certain formatting rules, which means it can only contain three types of records: data records, comments, and variables. The latest specification v1.02 asks to use a placeholder record to explain the intent of an empty ads.txt