Many advertisers believe that the ads.txt anti-fraud initiative is one of the best, and easiest, ways to limit digital ad fraud today. Unfortunately, publishers are slow to adopt the system, and it is starting to really upset many ad buyers. The issue is so concerning that some of them are looking to put out an ultimatum telling publishers that if they aren’t using it by Q4 of this year, they won’t advertise with them anymore.
Liane Nadeau, the VP and director of programmatic at DigitasLBi said of this issue, “Some advertisers care a lot about making sure that we’re not buying fraudulent inventory, and for those I think it will be as soon as Q4 that we start to say, ‘We’re only buying through Ads.txt-enabled publishers.’ Something like that is going to need to happen sooner than later to actually push the publishers to where they need to be.”
In addition, Resolution Media has setup a new program aimed at reducing ad fraud, and one of the major pillars of the system is using publishers that have adopted the ads.txt system. This program is called the Inventory Authentication Initiative, and will be used when buying ads across Omnicom Media Group.
The Resolution Media president George Manas said, “We’re mandating our publisher partners adopt Ads.txt for all of our open exchange buying. So we’re requiring any and all publishers that we partner with on a programmatic basis to implement the protocol with an aggressive but what we feel is achievable timeline.”
The ads.txt is a simple solution to a somewhat complex type of ad fraud. If, for example, BadSite.com wants to display advertisements through ad networks to make money, they can currently list the domain name on the bid request to something legit like ‘cnn.com’ or whatever. Advertisers who want to advertise on CNN will bid on the placement (through their programmatic system of choice) and the ad will show up.
The ads.txt solution allows the advertiser (or the ad network) to check to see if CNN actually takes ads through the exchange. If CNN does take ads through that exchange, they can further check to see if the unique publishers ID listed in the ads.txt matches the one for CNN. If not, it is fraudulent and the bidding won’t take place.
Any publishers who are looking to continue having high quality ads on their sites through ad networks or exchanges will want to make sure they are using the ads.txt system as soon as possible.
