The global digital advertising technical standards body, IAB Tech Lab, has launched 'Containerisation Project' to address emerging challenges in how programmatic advertising systems are built and maintained. For instance, live events (such as major sports tournaments) or specialised tools (such as dynamic creative optimisers which collect ads on the fly based on user data) exert pressure on scaling. The fragmented setups and uneven performance render it difficult to improve the existing setups. By standardising container technology within Open RTB (open real-time bidding), the project aims to facilitate the creation of a scalable, efficient, and sustainable programmatic ecosystem.
According to Anthony Katsur, CEO, IAB Tech Lab, the digital advertising industry has grown so much during the past decade that the underlying systems used for automated ad buying (programmatic) are struggling to keep up. “The way ad tech is built today is complex and has the potential to introduce inefficiency at integration points. While Open RTB isn’t going anywhere, we are taking a hard look at how programmatic architecture is deployed and the underlying protocols, such as HTTP/1.1, and proposing a more intentional, durable foundation to innovate the next generation of real-time bidding,” Katsur said.
The project will be led by a working group which will initially focus on guiding supported network protocols, instrumentation and metrics, baseline image standards, performance parameters, and security requirements. The group will offer guidelines for responsible data handling within containers for specific use cases, such as bid request/response enrichment, curation signalling, and fraud detection workflows.
The adtech players are reacting to the move already. Chalice AI, an adtech firm specialising in AI-driven programmatic solutions such as bid enrichment and evaluation, as well as Index Exchange, a global supply-side platform (SSP) provider, which operates an independent ad exchange, find this as a positive development.
IAB Tech Lab specifies that standardisation based on use cases will enable programmatic supply chain participants, such as SSPs and DSPs, to add and swap real-time bidding service partners without compromising efficiency and latency. Commenting on this aspect, Meera Choudhury, head of product at Chalice AI, said, “This gives engineers a shared technical foundation to build from. By establishing clarity on what is required, we can build in a way that respects those boundaries.”
