• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, December 11, 2017

Six months after the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Tech Lab released final specs for ads.txt, the programmatic supply chain is embracing it as a minimum standard for filtering inventory. Since RTBlog first reported on a Pixalate tracking study of publishers incorporating ads.txt, the number has grown from 3,523 in September to 53,390 currently.

Among the top 1,000 Alexa-ranked sites, penetration is now up to 18.6%, according to Pixalate.

In late September, Google said that by now its DoubleClick Bid Manager would only buy publishers inventory from “sources identified as authorized sellers in its ads.txt file when a file is available.”

And this morning, Smart (formerly Smart AdServer), will become the first programmatic ad platform to be 100% ads.txt compliant, meaning it will not trade any inventory that doesn’t utilize ads.txt.

“From Dec. 20 onward, all unauthorized ads.txt domains will be blocked to cater to Smart’s demand partners’ desire to buy only ads.txt compliant inventory,” the company asserted, adding there will be a short grace period for for sites that have not yet implemented ads.txt.