Latest updates from the Cross-Industry Programmatic Supply Chain Transparency Taskforce

What is the Cross-Industry Programmatic Supply Chain Transparency Taskforce? 

The taskforce has been set up to improve transparency within the digital advertising supply chain. Its creation follows the release of ISBA’s  ‘Supply Chain Transparency' study with PwC in May 2020, which mapped the programmatic supply chain from end to end. A number of IAB UK members voluntarily took part in the research, with the results showing that more work is needed to increase transparency in the digital ad ecosystem.  

Collaboration is central to achieving this and we’re committed to working with our members and industry partners to shine a light on the value added at each stage of the programmatic process. The taskforce includes IAB UK, ISBA, AOP, IPA and TAG.

What are the objectives of the taskforce? 

The main objectives of the Cross-Industry Programmatic Supply Chain Transparency Taskforce are: 

1. To enable supply chain participants (and their appointed representatives) access to data, for example through the development and implementation of industry agreed T&Cs, SLAs and standardised and privacy compliant data transfer protocols.

2. The evaluation of different techniques, including a common transaction ID, that would help achieve transparency and visibility in the programmatic supply chain to enable full end to end auditing. To make recommendations to the industry based on the results of these evaluations.

3. To agree a common set of defined and consistently labelled data fields to enable effective impression tracking through the programmatic supply chain for audit and evaluation purposes.

4. To agree the length of time that historic log file data is retained, and by whom, to enable auditing and evaluation of past and current campaigns.

5. To achieve cross-industry commitment to adopt common standards through the implementation of the identified processes, protocols and other recommendations in order to transform the programmatic supply chain.

You can read the full mission statement here. 

Who is part it?  

IAB UK along with ISBA, AOP, IPA and TAG are part of the Cross-Industry Programmatic Supply Chain Transparency Taskforce. 

How does it work? 

IAB UK is making the meeting notes of the three work streams available so all IAB members have visibility on what we’re doing on your behalf and what’s being discussed. 

• Steering Group: This group provides support, guidance and oversight of progress across the board to ensure achievement of the objectives

• Data & Product Working Group: This group brings together product and engineering teams to standardise data fields, naming conventions and formats, to better enable data matching between companies across the supply chain. The group works together to evaluate and compare the technical capability and feasibility of potential transparency solutions e.g. transaction ID and DLT

• Legal Working Group: This group ensures proposed solutions observe data/privacy regulation and other regulatory requirements. It derives master T&Cs to standardise legal access to data (based on proposals from the Data & Product Working Group)

These working groups meet regularly.

Meeting notes 

IAB UK is making the meeting notes of the three work streams accessible to the industry. Please note that the meeting notes have been written by ISBA.

What are the outputs?

In February 2022, the Taskforce released its first set of outputs to address the lack of transparency in the programmatic advertising supply chain. To enable advertisers and publishers to act on their existing rights to financial audits of their programmatic supply chains - with the aim to ultimately reduce the size of the unknown delta - the initial work of the Taskforce has focused on access to data and the standardisation of data consistency. Through extensive industry collaboration, it has produced a toolkit of three instruments available for adoption by the industry:

• The Audit Permission Letter (APL) intended to enable DSPs and SSPs to share the data needed for a full financial audit
• The Data Fields List (DFL), an agreed list of essential and supporting data fields which will provide the data to enable auditors to match impressions along the supply chain between advertisers and publishers
• The Principles document which summarises how the documents are intended to be used, by whom and why. Find out more about these resources and download them here

Get in touch:

If you have any questions about this work then please do get in touch with Tim Elkington, Chief Digital Officer at [email protected].