IAB Tech Lab

The dominant neutral standards body for digital advertising technology, with global industry-wide adoption of its specifications across the programmatic ecosystem.

IAB Tech Lab is a nonprofit industry consortium and the technical standards-setting arm of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). Founded in 2014 as a separate entity from IAB, it develops and maintains open technical standards, APIs, and software solutions that underpin the global digital advertising industry. Its work spans programmatic advertising infrastructure, identity and privacy frameworks, ad formats, measurement, and supply chain integrity. The organization is responsible for some of the most foundational specifications in AdTech, including OpenRTB (the real-time bidding protocol), ads.txt/sellers.json (supply chain transparency tools), the Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) in partnership with IAB Europe, the Global Privacy Platform (GPP), and VAST/VPAID/SIMID video ad standards. These standards are implemented by thousands of publishers, advertisers, agencies, DSPs, SSPs, and ad servers worldwide, making IAB Tech Lab an essential neutral infrastructure provider for the industry. As a member-driven nonprofit, IAB Tech Lab convenes working groups of industry stakeholders to collaboratively develop and ratify standards. Its market position is unique — it operates as a neutral, non-commercial body rather than a competitive vendor, giving it broad industry trust and adoption. In recent years, the organization has focused heavily on privacy-preserving identity solutions, addressability in a post-third-party-cookie world, and combating ad fraud and invalid traffic (IVT).