Ads stands for Authorised Digital Sellers. Txt stands for a text file. Ads.txt is a text file that is filled in by a publisher and is uploaded on a web server. This file contains a list of companies that are authorized to sell the publisher's inventory.
Ads.txt was created in 2017 by IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) in order to detect and prevent fraud in advertising.
Why Should You Use Ads.txt?
The most frequent problem of online advertisers is how to avoid fraud. That was the main purpose of Ads.txt when it was created. IAB wants to avoid them, focusing mainly on the arbitrage inventory and spoof domain. Let us introduce these two terms to you and get deeper into them.
Inventory arbitrage happens when ad industry mediators such as ad agencies or some trading networks buy some advertisement space directly from publishers and later resell it at a higher price to advertisers.
Domain spoofing happens when some suspicious people publish an advertisement on some strange websites that in some way resemble legitimate websites. Cybercriminals usually practise two ways for domain spoofing. They use malware and later insert some ads. For example, a user clicks on a weird site by mistake on a download button and automatically downloads a suspicious thing that later inserts advertisements of the same kind all the time. Cybercriminals may also modify ad tags. Advertisement exchangers give an ad tag with a code to identify the domain. Some cybercriminals can get access to the code, replace it with some static domain identifier that allows impersonalisation. Later on, advertisements will be shown on some weird and suspicious sites.
What Does Ads.txt Look Like?
Ads.txt is a text file that contains the following information:
• The domain name of a seller that is allowed to sell
• The publisher account ID
• The relationship with a seller: direct or reseller
• The type of inventory
In order to check if a site has an ads.txt file, you can just add "ads.txt" after the domain name. For example, if you want to check the status of ads.txt in a famous broadcasting British company, BBC, you should check the domain “https://www.bbc.com/ads.txt”.
Benefits of Ads.txt
• Easy to install as it is a text file
• Easy to edit anytime from any location
• Safe and Secure as it can be uploaded only by a site owner
Conclusion
Ads.txt is an essential tool that helps you avoid ad fraud in an easy and quick way. No matter what you do and what kind of a webpage you have, ads.txt will protect you from cyber fraud 24/7. The creation of an ads.txt file will take you just a few minutes today. In the future, it can potentially save you hundreds and thousands of euros. Why would not you waste a few minutes today for the sake of huge savings in the future?
If you have any questions about ads.txt, you can contact us anytime. The Whale Team would always be happy to assist you and make your business grow.
References:
- Digital Guide Ionos (2018): Ads.txt: what's the function of the file?
- Marciej Zawadzinski: What is Ads.txt and How Does It Work?
- PPCProtect: What Is ads.txt? How A Simple File Is Transforming The Ad Industry
- Robin Kurzer (2019): Anti-fraud tool Ads.txt looks vulnerable in botnet scam revelation
- Yuyu Chen (2017): Domain spoofing remains an unsolved issue in programme advertising
- Ads.txt Market (2019): Ads.txt - A publisher's must-have introduction!
- What's New in Publishing (2018): How publishers are getting fooled by ads.txt fraud