OpenRTB Consortium

The foundational open standard for real-time bidding, universally adopted across the programmatic advertising industry globally.

The OpenRTB Consortium is an industry initiative operating under the stewardship of IAB Tech Lab that created and maintains the OpenRTB specification, the de facto open standard for real-time bidding (RTB) in programmatic advertising. Originally launched in 2010 as a collaboration between leading demand-side platforms (DSPs) and supply-side platforms (SSPs), the consortium formalized a common language for bid requests and responses, enabling interoperability across the fragmented programmatic ecosystem. The specification defines how publishers make ad inventory available and how buyers bid on it in milliseconds. OpenRTB has become the backbone of modern programmatic advertising, with virtually every major DSP, SSP, ad exchange, and data platform implementing the protocol. The specification has evolved significantly over the years, with major versions including OpenRTB 2.x (widely deployed) and OpenRTB 3.0, which introduced a more modular and extensible architecture. Companion specifications such as AdCOM (Advertising Common Object Model) were developed alongside to standardize shared data objects. These standards reduce integration costs, accelerate partner onboarding, and enable the scale at which programmatic advertising operates globally. As a standards body rather than a commercial entity, the OpenRTB Consortium does not generate revenue or have employees in the traditional sense. Its work is conducted through working groups composed of member companies of IAB Tech Lab, which provides the organizational infrastructure, governance, and publishing platform for the specifications. The consortium's output is freely available and open to the entire industry, making it one of the most impactful non-commercial initiatives in AdTech history.

• 2010Founded