Programmatic: WTF is ADS.TXT?!

The other day, I was chatting with a group of Media Traders who confessed to me: "We hear about ads.txt all the time, but it’s still a bit blurry for us."

⌛ Let’s rewind 10 years ⌛

Back then, the digital advertising industry was reeling from the Methbot scandal : Hackers had managed to spoof the identity of major media sites like The New York Times, The Huffington Post, The Economist, etc., to siphon off advertisers' ad spend.

The estimated damage: Over $180 million diverted worldwide 💸💸

It was an absolute earthquake for trust within the programmatic ecosystem 🤯

Following this crisis, the IAB Tech Lab came up with a solution:

🛡️ The ADS.TXT (Authorized Digital Sellers) protocol.

From that point on, every publisher had to publicly declare which SSP seats were authorized to sell their inventory. If an SSP seat is not declared in the ads.txt file → DSPs block the Bid Requests 🚫

Ads.txt files are completely public 📖, and you can check them out yourself: Simply type: websitename.com/ads.txt (e.g., lemonde.fr/ads.txt)
👉 It’s simple, transparent, and public.

Since then, ads.txt files have evolved to address SPO (Supply Path Optimization) 🛣️

Publishers must now declare the status of each SSP seat:

• "Direct" = Contractually owned by the publisher.
• "Reseller" = Owned by an intermediary.

Since this is entirely self-declared, Resellers lobby publishers heavily to be listed as "Direct" 😉 because some DSPs aggressively deprioritize ad spend on seats flagged as "Resellers."

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