IAB Canada is thrilled to announce the official release of the Canadian News Media List. This first of its kind project positions Canada as a leader in efforts to give domestic news media a fighting chance in the programmatic landscape.
By offering a defined and verified Tech Lab object that acts as an “allowlist”, the Canadian News Media List will help advertisers circumvent domestic news blockage in their efforts to shield brand exposure to international, volatile news content – especially in today’s highly political climate. This effort goes a long way towards protecting domestic news content from the broader blockages that impact all English-speaking news entities around the globe.
The IAB Tech Lab sanctioned list of credible local news publishers will not only help buyers safely place ads on Canadian news publisher websites, but will also provide buyers important data points about the supply chain to develop greater confidence among buyers placing ads via programmatic real time bidding methods on the listed sites such as ads.txt.
The program will continue to gain international traction as IAB Tech Lab is now partnering with other local IABs and intends to add other markets to this repository with the hope that this list of vetted and credible news partners will continue to grow and help prevent persistent overwhelming blocking in the future. For full program guidelines you can click here.
While the initiative may appear simplistic in nature, it offers the industry several benefits:
- A centralized, IAB sanctioned “object”
- Conveyance of important attributes that will only grow in importance (ads.txt enabled, privacy compliance etc.) in the future
- International promotion and distribution to Ad Tech communities and the Buy-side
- The first category (news) tackled – we will roll out additional verticals in the coming months (and much of this is covered under the #NosMediasLocaux legacy)
IAB Tech lab has published the News Media List on the IAB Tech Lab tools portal: https://tools.iabtechlab.com. Users will be able to download (free of charge) the most current version of the Contributor list upon entering into a license agreement. Registered users will get access to an API to enable machine readable download of the list.
IAB Tech Lab will also append the availability of ads.txt files for each listing
We encourage the Ad Tech Community to explore the Allow List and utilize it to create a specific domestic news product. We would also encourage the entire Canadian Media buy-side to help support domestic news content by enabling the Allow List on media buys.
If you are a Canadian news content provider and wish to be included (at no charge) or have any questions about accessing the list, please reach out to policy@iabcanada.com and stay tuned for updates on other exciting progress we are making in support of Canadian media entities.