Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Tech Lab first introduced ‘Ads.txt’ (Authorized Digital Sellers) back in 2017 to help advertising buyers avoid arbitrage of unauthorized inventory and prevent the selling of fake domains.
In other words, there are bad actors out there trying to take over the ads on your site and earning revenue from your hard work by hacking into your site.
The Ads.txt file is used by publishers, who drop a text file on their web servers that lists all authorized sellers of their inventory. It helps publishers reclaim control of their media by getting more of an advertiser’s spend to the domain owner through their approved sales channels. By adding Ads.txt, you are able to white list your approved advertisers. If you have a WordPress site, you can use this post as your guide.
If you don’t you may need to add in the lines into your ads.txt manually.
Ads.Txt for Taboola
Here’s what some sample lines may look like if you’re using Taboola or advertising.com
- taboola.com, DIRECT
- spotx.tv,RESELLER
- spotxchange.com, RESELLER
- advertising.com, RESELLER
- pubmatic.com, RESELLER
- appnexus.com, RESELLER
- Indexexchange.com, RESELLER
- contextweb.com, RESELLER
- openx.com, RESELLER
- tremorhub.com, RESELLER
- rubiconproject.com, RESELLER
- freewheel.tv, RESELLER
- freewheel.tv, RESELLER
- aol.com, RESELLER
- rhythmone.com, RESELLER
How do I add the lines for Taboola?
- Copy and paste all the lines into your own text file; creating an ads.txt file.
- Save the file and send it to your website operator to have it added to your root domain (for example, https://taboola.com/ads.txt). See example here.