By continuously capturing ads.txt file data, this new, real-time service drives transparency into the programmatic buying process by consolidating current and historical information to help media buyers facilitate payment reconciliation
January 18, 2018 ‒ McLean, VA ‒ The Media Trust announces the release of their Ads.txt Manager, a real-time service designed to streamline the management of publishers’ ads.txt files accessed by advertising buyers, i.e., Demand Side Platforms (DSPs). Developed by the IAB Technology Laboratory to prevent the sale of counterfeit and unauthorized programmatic inventory, Authorized Digital Sellers (ads.txt) is a publisher’s pre-formatted index of authorized sellers that is posted to their domain(s) for media buyers to reference before initiating a transaction.
For DSPs, the process of trying to manually access and manage the growing number of ads.txt files is labor intensive, time consuming and highly inefficient. The Media Trust’s Ads.txt Manager mitigates this inefficiency by continuously crawling tens of thousands of the most heavily-trafficked publisher websites to capture the most recent, most accurate version of any publisher’s ads.txt file. Consolidating the data, this service provides centralized access to file data via API in either a JSON file or raw data format.
“Ads.txt can be confusing, but with The Media Trust’s tool you can quickly see a clean version of a publisher’s most up-to-date ads.txt file,” said Ari Paparo, CEO Beeswax, a leading provider of bidder-as-a-service programmatic solutions.
More than a real-time file aggregator, The Ads.txt Manager lets DSPs query for a specific publisher’s ads.txt file and then accurately displays the file’s entire contents in an easy-to-parse format. The service’s query parameters include domain, key, action, “as-of” date and the DSP’s specified format. Unlike other ads.txt query tools, Ads.txt Manager provides a near real-time version of the publisher’s ads.txt files, ensuring the DSP always has the publisher’s most-up-to-date list of authorized sellers. Queried ads.txt files with incomplete data return an error, preventing the DSP from wasting time viewing inadequate files. In addition, Ads.txt Manager archives every captured version of a publisher’s ads.txt file and notifies on file content changes, critical information for billing reconciliation.
“The ads.txt file was designed to communicate a publisher’s authorized sellers and prevent the sale of counterfeit or unauthorized impressions. Making this desired outcome a reality, our real-time tool automates the capture, archive and access to these files, allowing DSPs to gain more transparency into their programmatic media buys and reconcile payments,” says Chris Olson, CEO and co-founder of The Media Trust. “As an added benefit, Ads.txt Manager provides access to our growing digital vendor network, a group of 200+ entities dedicated to creating a better, more robust digital ecosystem.”
About the Media Trust
The Media Trust is fixing the internet by creating better digital ecosystems to govern assets, connect partners and enable digital risk management. Established in 2005, The Media Trust leverages a physical presence in 65 countries and 500 cities to detect and remediate security, privacy, ad quality and performance violations executing on websites and mobile apps. More than 600 media publishers, ad tech providers, agencies, retailers and enterprises—including 40 of comScore’s AdFocus Top 50 websites—rely on The Media Trust to protect their digital environment, their revenue and, most importantly, their brand.
