Authorized Digital Sellers

Ads.txt program

[keyplyr]

Ads.txt stands for Authorized Digital Sellers and is an account level file that resides on your server to publicly declare the companies you authorize to sell your digital inventory.

By creating a public record of Authorized Digital Sellers, ads.txt will create greater transparency in the inventory supply chain, and give publishers control over their inventory in the market, making it harder for bad actors to profit from selling counterfeit inventory across the ecosystem. As publishers adopt ads.txt, buyers will be able to more easily identify the Authorized Digital Sellers for a participating publisher, allowing brands to have confidence they are buying authentic publisher inventory.

[iabtechlab.com...]

http://example.com/ads.txt:

#< SSP/Exchange Domain >, < SellerAccountID >, < PaymentsType >, < TAGID >
greenadexchange.com, 12345, DIRECT, AEC242
blueadexchange.com, 4536, DIRECT
silverssp.com, 9675, RESELLER

[engine]

I've been reading up on this and there's a great deal more to it that first meets the eye.

It's a great idea, imho, and should help advertisers avoid bad actor sellers who arbitrage inventory and are happy to spoof domains to fool buyers. Publishers insert some code in their publishers clearly list who is and is not authorized to sell their ad inventory, by inserting the file and code on their site.

Google has been running tests on this, and according to reports around the Net, it may include a simple test to stop serving ads for fifteen minutes, and during that time a scan for ads still running shows the unauthorised sellers and publishers that might have either been duped, or deliberately showing the ads.
The results of the test are not public so it's reliant on comments from those involved.

[uk.businessinsider.com...]

This is pretty big stuff, and might go some way towards tackling fraud.

[keyplyr]

Hopefully domain spoofing will become much harder to carry out.

While I've been using this file for a while, the last 10 days has brought a lot of requests from various sources. Some of the ad marketing companies have likely included validation for ads.txt.

[glitterball]

Any advantage to adding ads.txt to a site that runs Adsense Ads only?
If so, could someone provide an example adsense line?

[keyplyr]

@glitterball - as explained above, this is a program " to publicly declare the companies you authorize to sell your digital inventory." This helps stop fake resellers of your products. If you don't sell your own products or 3rd party products specific to your company, this program would not be of use to you. More information at the link in OP.

As far as ads... if you are only using Adsense approved ads, you should be fine.

[Chrispcritters]

Has anyone seen how Google AdSense is supporting this?

[Chrispcritters]

Found it...

Example for publishers working with Google products
Ads.txt files from publishers working with Google products should contain lines in the following format, always using google.com as the domain name. Here are sample lines, based on the format above:

google.com, pub-0000000000000000, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0
google.com, pub-0000000000000000, RESELLER, f08c47fec0942fa0

[keyplyr]

Googlebot now requesting ads.txt across all my properties:

66.249.66.214 - - [16/Aug/2017:12:43:31 -0700] "GET /ads.txt HTTP/1.1" 200 4213 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"

@Chrispcritters - yes, see example in OP

[NathanT]

Here is the Google page explaining how to implement for Adsense and Ad Exchange: [support.google.com...]

[keyplyr]

Now seeing publically available software for detecting & validating ads.txt

[webmasterworld.com...]

[yaashul]

NathanT,

In the you mentioned there is one thing missing. If you are using Adx authorized partners, You should write NPM instead of RESELLER.