OpenRTB Consortium

Foundational standards body that defines the open real-time bidding protocol underpinning the programmatic advertising ecosystem globally

OpenRTB Consortium is an industry group that assembled technology leaders from both the supply and demand sides of digital advertising to develop an open API specification for the automated trading of digital media across platforms, devices, and advertising solutions.¹ Its mission is to spur growth in real-time bidding marketplaces by providing open industry standards for communication between buyers and sellers of publisher inventory, covering areas such as the real-time bidding protocol itself, information taxonomies, and offline configuration synchronization.¹ These protocol standards are designed to simplify connections between suppliers of publisher inventory — including exchanges, networks, and sell-side platforms — and competitive buyers such as bidders, demand-side platforms, and advertiser networks.¹ The RTB framework it underpins enables addressable advertising, giving buyers the ability to serve ads to consumers based on demographic, psychographic, or behavioral attributes.² More recent iterations of the specification, such as OpenRTB 2.6, have introduced significant enhancements specifically for the CTV space, including support for dynamic pod bidding and new fields that enable advanced contextual targeting and improved CTV addressability.³ Source 1: democraticmedia.org — Real-Time Bidding (RTB) Project Source 2: iabtechlab.com — OpenRTB (Real-Time Bidding) Source 3: bidswitch.com — OpenRTB 2.6 and Why it Matters for CTV