IAB Tech Lab
IAB Tech Lab creates open, neutral technical standards that enable interoperability, transparency, and privacy compliance across the entire digital advertising ecosystem. Its specifications reduce fragmentation and lower the cost of doing business for all industry participants.
Last updated Jun 11, 2026 by ATDb automated enrichment
- Industry
- AdTech Standards & Infrastructure
- Business Model
- Nonprofit Membership Organization
- Target Market
- Enterprise
- Employee Count
- 51-200
- Revenue Range
- Membership dues-funded nonprofit; estimated $5M-$20M annually
- Parent Company
- IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau)
- API Available
- Yes
The dominant and effectively sole global technical standards body for digital advertising, with near-universal industry adoption of its specifications
IAB Tech Lab is a nonprofit technology consortium and the technical standards development arm of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). Founded in 2014 as a separate entity from IAB, it is responsible for creating, maintaining, and promoting technical standards, APIs, and data formats that underpin the global digital advertising industry. Its work spans programmatic advertising infrastructure, identity, privacy, measurement, and supply chain transparency. The organization's portfolio of standards is foundational to how digital advertising operates at scale. OpenRTB governs real-time bidding exchanges between buyers and sellers, ads.txt and sellers.json address supply chain fraud and transparency, the Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) enables GDPR-compliant consent signaling, and the Global Privacy Platform (GPP) consolidates multi-jurisdiction privacy signals. IAB Tech Lab also maintains standards for ad formats (VAST, VPAID, MRAID), data taxonomies, and identity solutions including UID interoperability frameworks. IAB Tech Lab occupies a uniquely influential and neutral position in the AdTech ecosystem as a nonprofit membership organization. It does not compete commercially with industry players but instead convenes publishers, advertisers, agencies, ad tech vendors, and platforms to collaboratively solve industry-wide technical challenges. Its standards are adopted by virtually every major player in programmatic advertising globally, making it one of the most consequential organizations in the industry despite its relatively small staff size.
OpenRTB
The industry-standard protocol governing real-time bidding transactions between DSPs, SSPs, and ad exchanges
ads.txt / app-ads.txt
Authorized Digital Sellers specification enabling publishers to declare authorized resellers of their inventory, combating ad fraud
sellers.json
Complements ads.txt by allowing buyers to verify the entities in the supply chain
Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF)
GDPR-compliant framework for capturing and communicating user consent signals across the programmatic supply chain
Global Privacy Platform (GPP)
Unified framework for transmitting privacy, consent, and consumer choice signals across multiple regulatory jurisdictions
VAST (Video Ad Serving Template)
XML-based standard for serving video ads across players and platforms
MRAID (Mobile Rich Media Ad Interface Definitions)
Standard API for rich media ads within mobile app environments
OM SDK (Open Measurement SDK)
SDK enabling third-party viewability and verification measurement in mobile apps without multiple competing SDKs
Data Transparency Standards
Audience taxonomy and data labeling standards enabling consistent data classification across buyers and sellers
Privacy Sandbox Readiness
Technical guidance and tooling to help the industry adapt to post-third-party-cookie identity and measurement solutions
- 2014Founded