Sunday, January 15, 2023

什麼是 app-ads.txt?

Authorized Sellers for Apps (或稱 app-ads.txt) 是授權數位賣方標準的擴充功能,可進一步相容支援要在行動應用程式中顯示的廣告,同時確保應用程式廣告空間只會透過您授權的管道出售。您可以藉由建立 app-ads.txt 檔案,更全面地控管誰可在您的應用程式上銷售廣告空間,以免廣告客戶誤向假冒的不肖分子購買廣告空間。


app-ads.txt 檔案會開放給廣告交易平台、供應端平台 (SSP) 和其他買方與第三方廠商使用及檢索。

什麼是 ads.txt?

適用於網站的授權數位賣方 (或稱 ads.txt) 是一項由 IAB 推動的計畫,目的是讓程式輔助廣告流程更透明。您可以自行建立 ads.txt 檔案,區分出有權銷售廣告空間的賣方。這些公開檔案可供廣告交易平台、供應端平台 (SSP)、其他買方和第三方供應商檢索。


您的 ads.txt/app-ads.txt 不可遭到地理圍欄封鎖。

How To Create And Post An Ads.Txt File

Definition: Publisher IDs

What are publisher IDs? Sometimes called the seller network id or the account id,

these are the IDs associated with a Publisher’s account on an exchange or SSP platform. Content owners, publishers and their reseller networks and other businesses may all have accounts on these platforms. As a best practice this ID is transmitted as part of the OpenRTB protocol as the Publisher.ID along with the Publisher.Domain in the Publisher object. In other RTB protocols this may be called ‘seller_network_id’, member or seat ID.


Domain owners

Domain owners will need to post their Publisher ID for every exchange where they have an account. Exchanges already pass a Publisher ID in every call, and it represents the account owner that is getting paid for the media sold from it. Since this is already in every bid request it should be easy for exchanges to provide these IDs to domain owners and networks selling on their exchange.


As a best practice, exchanges should make it easy for domain owners and third party resellers to access their Publisher ID’s for sharing. If an exchange has multiple Publisher.ID’s for a single domain – for example if they have one for a header integration, and another for the tag in the domain owner’s ad server – they will need to provide the domain owner with both ID’s for publication.


Third party sales houses and aggregating networks

Third party sales houses and aggregating networks need to make sure that they provide the full list of exchange-based Publisher ID’s that they use to sell inventory, so that the domain owner can publish that information in their ads.txt file. If the partner doesn’t give the domain owner the correct information to post in the ads.txt file, buyers may not view the inventory as authorized and may value it lower than through a more transparent channel.


How To Use Ads.Txt

Buying platforms

Buying platforms (e.g. DSP’s and Networks) can crawl the web to acquire the Authorized Digital Sellers list for every domain. This list will identify the Exchange or SSP that the domain is authorized to be sold on, and the Publisher ID on each exchange that is explicitly authorized to sell the domain. Additionally, ads.txt enables the buyer to determine if the Publisher ID that they are buying the domain from is owned and operated by the publisher, or if it is an authorized seller.


Ads.Txt Helps Publishers

Counterfeit inventory comes in many forms, but it typically results in real media spend not reaching legitimate and deserving publishers. Ads.txt helps publishers reclaim control of their media, brand, and rate card. This means more of an advertiser’s spend can get to the domain owner through their approved sales channels, and not be wasted on counterfeit inventory.


Ads.Txt Helps SSPs/Exchanges

SSP’s and Exchanges with direct relationships with domain owners can be harmed by the amount of counterfeit and misrepresented inventory in the market today because it is usually cheaper than the real thing, or outperforms the real media due to less accountable KPI’s. Buyers who generally target domains across multiple exchanges are attracted to the low prices and seemingly “high performance” of the same domain on exchanges that don’t have direct relationships with the domain owners themselves. Sometimes, this cheap and high performing inventory is not actually inventory on the domain that the buyer wanted, but is misrepresenting the domain, format or serving environment to manufacture lower prices and higher performance. This means buyers may end up directing more of their spend to counterfeit inventory than to legitimate publishers on their preferred SSPs and Exchanges partners, harming honest SSPs, Exchanges and Publishers bottom line.


Ads.Txt Helps Advertisers

By using buying platforms that support ads.txt, Advertisers can be more confident that their working media budget is going to accountable media, and not counterfeit inventory.


Programmatic buying has historically focused on URLs and domains relying on the assumption that they represent authentic inventory. This has left the door open to various types of invalid and fraudulent activities such as creating and selling counterfeit inventory. Ads.txt helps address this problem by giving buyers the choice to only buy from authorized digital sellers of a participating domain.


Ads.Txt Helps DSPs

DSPs that want to help their advertisers buy in a more secure fashion can now offer their Advertisers Authorized Digital Seller inventory. Ads.txt is not prescriptive about its use, so each DSP can form and create their own approach to advertisers to differentiate their offering from others.


Ads.Txt Helps Third Party Networks And Sales Houses

Many domain owners turn to others for help monetizing their inventory. That’s why Ads.txt is built to provide networks and sales houses with a way to differentiate themselves in the market and become authorized sellers of specific domains. With ads.txt, they can make sure that their value proposition or relationship with a domain owner is uniquely valued, and cannot be undercut by counterfeit inventory or other fraudulent behaviors.

What Is The Ads.Txt Project?

The mission of the ads.txt project is simple: Increase transparency in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. Ads.txt stands for Authorized Digital Sellers and is a simple, flexible and secure method that publishers and distributors can use to publicly declare the companies they authorize to sell their digital inventory.


By creating a public record of Authorized Digital Sellers, ads.txt will create greater transparency in the inventory supply chain, and give publishers control over their inventory in the market, making it harder for bad actors to profit from selling counterfeit inventory across the ecosystem. As publishers adopt ads.txt, buyers will be able to more easily identify the Authorized Digital Sellers for a participating publisher, allowing brands to have confidence they are buying authentic publisher inventory.


What is ads.txt?

Ads.txt is a simple, flexible, and secure method for publishers and distributors to declare who is authorized to sell their inventory, improving transparency for programmatic buyers.


Ads.txt supports transparent programmatic digital media transactions and can remove the financial incentive from selling counterfeit and misrepresented media. Similar to robots.txt, ads.txt can only be posted to a domain by a publisher’s webmaster, making it valid and authentic. As a text file, ads.txt is easy to update, making it flexible. The data required to populate the file is readily available in the OpenRTB protocol, making it simple to gather and target. And because publishers sell their inventory through a variety of sales channels, ads.txt supports the following types of supplier relationships:


Domain owners who sell on exchanges through their own accounts

Networks and sales houses who programmatically sell on behalf of domain owners

Content syndication partnerships where multiple authorized sellers represent the same inventory

What Problem Does Ads.Txt Solve?

The ads.txt project aims to prevent various types of counterfeit inventory across the ecosystem by improving transparency in the digital programmatic supply chain.


When a brand advertiser buys media programmatically, they rely on the fact that the URLs they purchase were legitimately sold by those publishers. The problem is, there is currently no way for a buyer to confirm who is responsible for selling those impressions across exchanges, and there are many different scenarios when the URL passed may not be an accurate representation of what the impression actually is or who is selling it. While every impression already includes publisher information from the OpenRTB protocol, including the page URL and Publisher.ID, there is no record or information confirming who owns each Publisher.ID, nor any way to confirm the validity of the information sent in the RTB bid request, leaving the door open to counterfeit inventory.


Counterfeit inventory – is defined here as a unit of inventory sourced from a domain, app or video that is intentionally mislabeled and offered for sale a different domain, app or video. The motivation to create counterfeit inventory comes in many forms including, to sell invalid traffic (automated non-human, or incentivised/mislead human traffic) by hiding it in real traffic, to attract higher prices by mislabeling inventory as brand inventory, to bypass content or domain blacklists, or to capture advertising spend restricted to whitelisted domains, among others.


Note that this form of “inventory fraud” in advertising is independent of how the traffic is generated. It can potentially include a mix of for example automated (non-human) bot traffic and real human user traffic. It can also exist as a small amount of authentic and valid inventory mixed with mislabeled inventory.


How Does Ads.Txt Work?

Ads.txt works by creating a publicly accessible record of authorized digital sellers for publisher inventory that programmatic buyers can index and reference if they wish to purchase inventory from authorized sellers. First, participating publishers must post their list of authorized sellers to their domain. Programmatic buyers can then crawl the web for publisher ads.txt files to create a list of authorized sellers for each participating publisher. Then programmatic buyers can create a filter to match their ads.txt list against the data provided in the OpenRTB bid request.


Example: Example.com publishes ads.txt on their web server listing three exchanges as authorized to sell their inventory, including Example.com’s seller account IDs within each of those exchanges.


http://example.com/ads.txt:

#< SSP/Exchange Domain >, < SellerAccountID >, < PaymentsType >, < TAGID >

greenadexchange.com, 12345, DIRECT, AEC242

blueadexchange.com, 4536, DIRECT

silverssp.com, 9675, RESELLER


Note: The seller’s Publisher.ID will be specified in the “SellerAccountID” field in the ads.txt.


A buyer receiving a bid request claiming to be example.com can verify if the exchange and SellerAccountID matches the authorized sellers listed in example.com/ads.txt file.




Saturday, January 14, 2023

What Is The Ads.Txt Project?

The mission of the ads.txt project is simple: Increase transparency in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. ads.txt stands for Authorized Digital Sellers and is a simple, flexible and secure method that publishers and distributors can use to publicly declare the companies they authorize to sell their digital inventory.


By creating a public record of Authorized Digital Sellers, ads.txt will create greater transparency in the inventory supply chain, and give publishers control over their inventory in the market, making it harder for bad actors to profit from selling counterfeit inventory across the ecosystem. As publishers adopt ads.txt, buyers will be able to more easily identify the Authorized Digital Sellers for a participating publisher, allowing brands to have confidence they are buying authentic publisher inventory.