• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 30, 2021

The explosive growth in connected television (CTV) has attracted fraudsters, making it important for anti-fraud solutions to be built for the media.

On Thursday the IAB Tech Lab Cryptographic Security Foundations Working Group released a new version of security for the digital advertising industry using industry-standard cryptographic security protocols.

The improvements to the upgrade support programmatic CTV ad buying and selling, where recent ad fraud attempts have become increasingly prevalent. 

CTV investments in the United States grew by 40.6% year-over-year in 2020 to more than $9 billion. By the end of this year, ad spend is projected to climb to $13.41 billion, according to eMarketer.

The IAB Tech Lab specifications and guidelines — ads.cert 2.0 — that the group developed are intended to help improve transactions, making them safe and transparent, across ad buying and selling through several security protocols.

It includes specifications for the “Call Signs” and “Authenticated Connections” protocols, and address Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) related ad fraud specifically for CTV.  

ads.cert 2.0 creates an added level of security by using industry-standard cryptographic security protocols to secure buying and selling of programmatic CTV ad inventory, according to the group. 

The release include:  

• The “ads.cert Call Signs” protocol defines a mechanism that enables businesses to be able to formally identify other businesses involved in any one transaction. It does this by using DNS records to publish public keys and metadata about the businesses involved.
• The “ads.cert Authenticated Connections” protocol adds origin authentication and tamper resistance to any request made server-to-server, such as bid request, creative fetches, impression pings, and billing notifications. 
• The “ads.cert Authenticated Delivery” protocol will authenticate the data in a bid request and enables buyers to identify if any of the bid parameters had been tampered with or changed from the original source.
• The “ads.cert Authenticated Devices” protocol will support attestation from the manufacturer about the legitimacy of the device the ad is being served on.