Admixer has joined the ad platforms that require ads.txt integration from their partners. We want to explain publishers why they need to cooperate and how to start.

The preconditions for ads.txt idea are two major tendencies – world trend of data source equality and the strive for transparency.

Ad industry needs it to reduce the volume of fraudulent traffic. As for the buy side, it’s obvious. Buyers are eager to optimize their spends and know exactly what inventory they are buying.

Premium publishers have all the reasons to go for it, since ad fraud lessens the value of their inventory. Clear buying process benefits those that have quality inventory to offer.

Tips for publishers

• Ad buyers want to buy high-quality and safe traffic. They will soon start cutting off publishers that don’t use ads.txt. The sooner you start using it, the more time you’ll have to deal with all the tech issues.
• Use specs and guides. Ads.txt is not technically complex. It’s a plain text file and all you need to know is its structure.
• Cooperate with SSPs. Ads.txt system requires all units to act jointly. If this joint cooperation doesn’t go smoothly, any link can take a hit.

What is ads.txt in general

Ads.txt is a text file that hosts the list of publisher’s authorized ad sellers.

It’s based on IAB specs, so the creation of the file is unified for every publisher.

The most general process of ads.txt integration is as follows:

• Gather the list of all sellers of your inventory: ad networks, ad exchanges, SSPs.
• Formalize it – a line in the list should contain seller’s domain, publisher’s ID within this seller’s system and their relationship type.
• Host the file on your main domain – and not on subdomains, this is important. Example: yourdomain.com/ads.txt.

The structure of the file

The line for the ads.txt file you get from us contains three fields separated by commas:

Field #1: Admixer domain name.

Field #2: Your Subscription ID within our ad system.

Field #3: The type of relationship – ‘DIRECT’ or ‘RESELLER’.

We urge all of our direct publishers to join the initiative. To help our partners, we made it easy for everyone to quickly access their Subscription ID within our system from the Personal settings.

Before we perform further ad transactions, we run our crawler to make sure you have listed Admixer as your seller. It’s not mandatory, but only for now. The initiative got its support from Google, so we can expect an increased volume of its integration.

Start now, use our help and get ready for the future of transparent ad buying!