A Longitudinal Analysis of the ads.txt Standard

摘要: Programmatic advertising provides digital ad buyers with the convenience of purchasing impressions through Real Time Bidding (RTB) auctions. However, programmatic has also given rise to a novel form fraud known as domain spoofing, in which attackers sell counterfeit that claim be from high-value publishers. To mitigate Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Tech Lab introduced ads.txt standard May 2017 help verify authorized sellers, well promote overall transparency advertising.In this work, we present 15-month longitudinal, observational study standard. We do understand (1) if it is helping combat spoofing and (2) whether offered by can provide useful data researchers privacy advocates.With respect halting observe over 60% Alexa Top-100K publishers run RTB ads have adopted ads.txt, exchanges advertisers appear honoring With transparency, widespread adoption allows us explicitly identify 1,000 domains belonging exchanges, without having rely on crowdsourcing or heuristic methods.However, find still long way reaching its full potential. Many yet adopt standard, major unauthorized violate This opens door attacks. Further, often include errors must cleaned mitigated before practically useful.