Ads.txt

Ads.txt

What is it

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

Via IAB Tech Lab

Example for CodeFund

# Ads.txt
# <ExchangeDomain>,<SellerAccountId>,<PaymentType>

# CodeFund
codefund.io, USER_ID, DIRECT

Where USER_ID should be replaced with your CodeFund user id. To get your user id, simply log in to the app, and go to your user profile, and grab the id from the url (Ex: https://app.codefund.io/users/736).

The comments in the example aren't necessary (lines starting with #), and are just there to aid in readability.

Additional Information

The ads.txt should be crawlable (i.e. not in your robots.txt file) and should also be a visitable route from the application.

Resources

• Ensure Ads.txt can be crawled
• Ads.txt specification v1.0.2