State of Ads.txt – 2019

Ad fraudsters keep siphoning the ad dollars and the convoluted adtech ecosystem struggled to clear up the supply chain. IAB Tech Lab, a digital media consortium finally came up with a simple text-based tool that could curb the domain spoofers. From preventing spoofers to ruling out unauthorized sellers, Ads.txt file, indeed, does the job.

Of course, not just publishers, adtech companies helped the tool to get the adoption it requires.

Ads.txt – Everything You Need To Know

Programmatic Selling on the Open Internet

At Automatad, we work with hundreds of publishers across the globe and we’ve seen that the industry (especially, publishers) aren’t aware of the state of ads.txt. Some didn’t adopt the ads.txt as they felt it’s not necessary to do so. We made it mandatory for publishers we work with, to have an updated and errorless ads.txt file.

We also noticed that there’s more we could do. When you decode the ads.txt files, you can see the state of programmatic selling – Who are the most-used exchanges, seller-to-reseller ratio, % of publishers using FAN (Facebook Audience Network), etc.

Why do you need to know the details?

We’re glad, you asked – To set a benchmark and improve the programmatic selling on the open internet. Though we can’t decide the exact state of programmatic selling just by looking at the ads.txt, there’s certainly more we can derive other than adoption %.

Unlike others, we tend to dive deep and answer specific questions, rather than skimming over the surface. Let’s get to the subject.