IAB Tech Lab Launches Open-Source Initiative to Increase Cross-Industry Transparency, Collaboration and Trust

The next generation of industry standards will evolve as code and late last week, IAB Tech Lab announced its plan to support the industry and facilitate the governance and management of relevant open-source projects that will support innovation, deployment and adoption of standards via code development, while identifying and developing new foundational technologies in support of the advertising industry needs.  

This first of its kind concerted industry effort to organize and maintain relevant open-source projects in one place housed on GitHub, seeks to provide actual standards implementations that can be directly integrated. The initiative will also provide tools that can be helpful in deploying standards as well as samples, or reference standards that will be shared. 

“We are at a time when great collaboration and transparency is needed to move the industry forward,” said Shailley Singh, acting General Manager and SVP, Product Management, IAB Tech Lab. “The Open-Source Initiative aims to support the growth of open standards, drive adoption, and share skills and applications to ensure that technology works for everyone.”  

This forward-thinking initiative will be governed by the IAB Tech Lab Architecture Group composed of Extreme Reach, GroupM, GumGum, Oracle, Tapad, and The Trade Desk. Initial code contributions will come from engineering teams at Google, Index Exchange, The Trade Desk, and Zefr, and include the following projects as a starting point:  

  • Unified ID 2.0 (UID2): Open-Source ID framework 
  • Brand suitability test benchmarks: Repository of human reviewed content according to GARM standards 
  • Ads.cert: Proof of concept libraries for implementing authenticated connections for secure ad buying using Ads.cert 2.0 specification that is work in progress 

“In a borderless industry such as ours, this type of transparent, global open access to information and standards is critical. Canada has a long history of contributing intellectual property to the global supply chain code and this initiative allows our market and others to continue to lean in”, said Sonia Carreno, President of IAB Canada.

You can find all current projects and details on governance, project submission, code of conduct, and community guidance for the Open-Source Initiative here. To find out about IAB Tech Lab North memberships please reach out to memberships@iabcanada.com