For nearly three years and counting, ads.txt has been the industry standard to combat invalid traffic (IVT) and fraudulent activity by the bad actors in our industry. Publishers that implement ads.txt position themselves to receive as much programmatic demand as possible and mitigate the potential of losing future revenue.
RhythmOne has fully supported the ads.txt initiative and promoted its use to publishers since its rollout by the IAB in May 2017.
A Growing Trend
Earlier this month, Pixalate released its 2019 App-ads.txt and Ads.txt Trends Report. Per their findings, in the one-year period between Q4 2018 and Q4 2019, adoption of ads.txt by publishers doubled year-over-year. Today, more than 1.2 million domains now have ads.txt to help combat invalid traffic (IVT). And adoption is continuing to grow.
This is encouraging news, because display IVT is still top of mind for those of us in the programmatic ecosystem. According to digital media professionals surveyed by verification firm Integral Ad Science (IAS) in November-December 2019, 38% were worried about increasing levels of fraud in programmatic advertising in 2020.
On the sell side, eMarketer reported that 56% of US publishers told research firm Advertiser Perceptions last year that bots, fraud, and malware were limiting the amount of inventory they made available programmatically. In addition to these very tangible IVT concerns, “diminishing publisher margins on impressions sold” (49%), “trust in our ad tech partners” (37%), and “challenges setting a private marketplace” (35%) were cited as leading factors that limited inventory allocation.
Empowering Publishers to Activate and Earn
As we detailed in our recent blog post Supply Path Optimization: The March Towards a More Transparent Programmatic Ecosystem, RhythmOne publishers — through our self-serve Programmatic Direct and Preferred Deals offerings — can easily set their own private marketplaces (PMPs) via our Partner Hub. We also offer publishers a very competitive fee structure to help reduce their cost of doing business and improve their bottom line.
To deepen our commitment to optimizing the supply value of our partners — and to leverage Tremor International’s recent acquisition of Unruly — RhythmOne publishers can now benefit from additional revenue driven by new demand side platform (DSP), agency, and brand partnerships that are aligned with Unruly.
Update Your Ads.txt File
For those publishers who already partnered and activated with RhythmOne, you will need to update your ads.txt file to include Unruly’s information to help us give you access to this additional demand.
- Add a line using video.unrulymedia.com, with the same ID used in your Rhythmone.com listing. (Note: This listing should be in included in addition to your current RhythmOne listing and is not meant as a replacement.)
- Format: video.unrulymedia.com,<Pub_EX_ID>,DIRECT
In the above code, Pub_EX_ID must be replaced with your RhythmOne-issued Publisher ID.
If you do not know your Publisher ID and/or if you are partnered but not yet activated with us, email support@rhythmone.com or contact your RhythmOne account manager.
RhythmOne arms premium publishers with tools to help maximize their revenue generation potential and a campaign platform that offers robust reporting and transparency to help enable more effective inventory management. For more information, email support@rhythmone.com or reach out to your RhythmOne account manager.
Not yet partnered with us? Apply today!
Forward-Looking Statements
This article contains forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can
identify forward-looking statements by the words “may,” “will,” “expect,”
“intend,” “plan,” “objective,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “predict,”
“project,” “potential,” “continue” and “ongoing,” or the negative of these
terms, or other comparable terminology intended to identify statements about
the future. All statements other than statements of historical fact are
statements that could be forward-looking statements, including, but not limited
to, statements about the potential and effectiveness of programmatic
advertising. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and
uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that could cause actual results
and the timing of events to differ materially from future results that are
expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could
cause or contribute to such differences include the dynamic and rapidly
evolving sector, as well as the highly competitive industry that RhythmOne
operates in, which make it difficult to evaluate prospects. These and other
risk factors are discussed in Tremor International Ltd.’s Annual Report for the
period ended December 31, 2018. The forward-looking statements in this press
release are based on information available to RhythmOne as of the date hereof,
and we assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.