IAB Tech Lab
IAB Tech Lab provides the open technical standards and tools that enable interoperability, transparency, and privacy compliance across the digital advertising ecosystem, reducing fragmentation and operational costs for all participants.
Last updated Jul 12, 2026 by ATDb automated enrichment
At a glance
- Employees
- 51-200
- Revenue
- Membership dues-funded nonprofit; estimated $5M-$20M annually
About
The dominant and de facto global technical standards body for digital advertising, with near-universal industry adoption of its core specifications.
IAB Tech Lab is a nonprofit technology consortium and the technical standards 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 enable interoperability across the digital advertising supply chain. Its work spans identity, privacy, measurement, supply chain transparency, and ad formats, making it a foundational infrastructure provider for the entire AdTech industry. The organization is responsible for some of the most widely adopted standards in digital advertising, including OpenRTB (the protocol governing programmatic ad auctions), ads.txt and sellers.json (supply chain transparency tools), the Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) developed in partnership with IAB Europe, VAST and VPAID for video advertising, and the Global Privacy Platform (GPP) for privacy signal standardization. These standards are implemented by thousands of publishers, advertisers, agencies, DSPs, SSPs, and ad servers worldwide. IAB Tech Lab occupies a unique and critical position in the AdTech ecosystem as a neutral, industry-governed body. It does not compete commercially with its members but instead provides the technical rails on which the industry operates. Its working groups bring together stakeholders from across the ecosystem to collaboratively solve technical challenges, particularly around privacy regulation compliance, identity resolution in a post-cookie world, and programmatic supply chain integrity. Membership includes major platforms, publishers, agencies, and technology vendors.
Business model
Membership/Trade Association
Target market
Enterprise
What they offer
OpenRTB
The industry-standard protocol for real-time bidding in programmatic advertising, enabling communication between DSPs and SSPs.
ads.txt / app-ads.txt
Authorized Digital Sellers specification allowing publishers to declare authorized sellers of their inventory to combat ad fraud.
sellers.json
Complements ads.txt by enabling buyers to discover and verify the entities involved in the selling of digital ad inventory.
VAST (Video Ad Serving Template)
Standard XML schema for serving video ads, enabling communication between ad servers and video players.
Global Privacy Platform (GPP)
A unified framework for transmitting privacy, consent, and consumer choice signals across the digital advertising supply chain.
Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF)
A GDPR-focused framework developed with IAB Europe for managing user consent signals across the programmatic ecosystem.
SupplyChain Object
An OpenRTB extension that enables buyers to see all parties involved in the selling of a bid request, improving supply chain transparency.
SIMID (Secure Interactive Media Interface Definition)
A standard for interactive video ad experiences that replaces VPAID with a more secure and controlled interface.
Data Label / Data Transparency Standard
A standardized label format for data products to improve transparency in data buying and selling.
Addressability & Identity Solutions
Frameworks and specifications supporting privacy-preserving identity resolution in a post-third-party-cookie environment.
Key features
Use cases
Customer segments
Tech & specs
Technology stack
Security & compliance
Deployment
API
Yes
- 2014 · Founded