Who are the IAB Tech Lab?

As the new Ad Tech and Standards Manager at IAB UK part of my role will be communicating the development of any technical initiatives that would benefit the UK industry. A number of the initiatives that we support come from the IAB Tech Lab and the purpose of this blog is to inform you on who the IAB Tech Lab are and how this plays into your IAB UK membership.

Not to be confused with IAB US the IAB Tech Lab are a separate company under the IAB umbrella headquartered in New York. The IAB Tech Lab are an international trade body who produce global technical standards for the industry. They work as a neutral body to develop standards, shared data sources and protocols to improve the technical infrastructure to benefit the industry.

IAB Tech Lab help to reduce the friction and increase transparency across the supply chain. One of the better-known initiatives that the IAB Tech Lab manages is OpenRTB. OpenRTB are industry wide protocols that allow parties to transact RTB at scale.

I am an IAB UK member so what does it mean for me?

IAB UK are members of the Tech Lab, we sit on the working groups for the projects that the Tech Lab have, feeding back the input we get from our advisory and steering groups to the relevant projects. We support the initiatives that come from the Tech Lab and share these with our members for you to adopt and benefit from.

What projects should I be aware of now?

Ads.txt/ads.cert - A simple solution introduced by the IAB Tech Lab in 2017 to help increase transparency and reduce the levels of ad fraud in the ecosystem; adopted by IAB UK for the Gold Standard

IAB new ad portfolio - The new ad portfolio replaces all previous creative specifications. It introduces the concept of LEAN creatives to create a more user-friendly ad experience. This new ad portfolio meets the need for cross-device responsive units by switching from fixed-dimension creatives to aspect ratio creatives

Open RTB 3.0 - The latest update to the OpenRTB protocols, proposing some of the biggest changes to OpenRTB since its inception in 2010. Find out more in episode 10 of the IAB UK Podcast: https://www.iabuk.com/news-article/iab-uk-podcast

DigiTrust - IAB Tech Lab acquired DigiTrust in April 2018 to support and develop a real-time standardised user identifier.

To find out more about these initiatives and all the other projects that the IAB Tech Lab are working on please visit https://iabtechlab.com/

How do I get involved?

IAB UK are introducing a new Ad Tech Advisory group where we will talk through projects that the Tech Lab are working on as well as agree on outputs for IAB UK to work that would benefit our market. To be a part of this advisory group, or any of our other groups please contact [email protected]

Stay in the loop

The IAB UK website will be updated with any news and information, so watch this space. To receive updates about the Tech Lab to your inbox please subscribe by emailing: [email protected]

Alternatively, to work directly with the Tech Lab on the projects listed above or any others; you can become a member of the IAB Tech Lab. More information on how to do this and what this entails can be found here: https://iabtechlab.com/about-the-iab-tech-lab/join-the-iab-tech-lab/

That’s all for this update. Until next time!