IAB Tech Lab Launches Open Source Initiative to Increase Cross-Industry Transparency and Collaboration

IAB Tech Lab announced today the launch of its Open Source Initiative with the aim to increase transparency and collaboration across the advertising community.

While there are several open source projects supported by advertising technology companies and individuals, there has not been a concerted industry effort to organize and maintain relevant open source projects in one place. The Open Source Initiative, housed on GitHub, seeks to solve this problem. It will provide actual standards implementations that can be directly integrated and tools that can be helpful in deploying standards. In addition, samples, or reference standards will be shared, to provide best practices for implementation. The initiative will be governed by the IAB Tech Lab Architecture Group composed of Extreme Reach, GroupM, GumGum, Oracle, Tapad, and The Trade Desk.

Initial code contributions will come from engineering teams at Google, Index Exchange, The Trade Desk, and Zefr, and include the following projects as a starting point:

• Unified ID 2.0 (UID2): Open Source ID framework
• Brand suitability test benchmarks: Repository of human reviewed content according to GARM standards
• Ads.cert: Proof of concept libraries for implementing authenticated connections for secure ad buying using Ads.cert 2.0 specification that is work in progress

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“We are at a time when great collaboration and transparency is needed to move the industry forward,” said Shailley Singh, acting General Manager and SVP, Product Management, IAB Tech Lab. “The Open Source Initiative aims to support the growth of open standards, drive adoption, and share skills and applications to ensure that technology works for everyone.”

“Having open access to all pertinent information in one central location can be immensely beneficial for the industry,” said Neal Richter, Chairperson of the IAB Tech Lab. “The Open Source Initiative provides an opportunity to enhance collaboration and increase more adoption of standards and software solutions to help support the advertising industry needs.”