We are glad to announce that TechBravo’s OwnAdX – White Label RTB Ad Exchange now supports sellers.json specification, a new standard released by the IAB Tech Lab. What does this specification do, and how does it help programmatic advertisers? Let’s dive deeper into it!
Sellers.json is a file that provides a mechanism to enable buyers’ platforms to discover the inventory is of either the direct sellers or intermediaries. It is an essential JSON file hosted on a sellers platform website which shows the relationship of the inventory and the final sellers through a bid request. However, all this needs to be ads.txt authorized.
The demand side can certainly look up ads.txt for the list of authorized sellers. However, ads.txt file cannot pinpoint the specific publisher behind the ad request (supply side). This is where sellers.json comes in picture.
How Sellers.json Benefits You?
A lack of transparency has long been one of the major concerns around the programmatic advertising ecosystem. Sellers.json is a gigantic step forward in this direction. It helps bring in more transparency as compared to ads.txt, makes the programmatic ecosystem much more open, fair, and trustworthy.
This specification will go a great way in combating digital ad frauds. This will, in turn, increase a brand’s confidence in the inventory it is buying, all the while making the buys more safe. Sellers.json will offer complete transparency into all the intermediary players involved in the selling of a bid request. What’s more, rather than supplied with every bid request, it allows information to be cached and looked up “offline”. This will enable smaller bid request object sizes.
How Does It Differ From Ads.Txt?
Both sellers.json and ads.txt are from IAB Tech Lab, and were introduced to increase trust and transparency in the programmatic ecosystem. But sellers.json provides certain additional data that ads.txt could never provide.
However, truth be told, we need more push on the adoption part. Although the advantages are conspicuous, a lot of education needs to be put in place across the ecosystem. It is incumbent upon the exchanges and SSPs to kickstart the drive for adoption. Only after a sufficient share of the developers and app publishers have implemented it, the demand side will be able to help by mandating adoption.
While the industry is finding new ways to combat ad fraud and infuse more transparency, it is also crucial for the industry players to accept and implement these new specs and protocols. It is the concerted efforts of the industry as a whole that will help realize the goal of achieving supply path transparency and make programmatic trading more open and reliable.
