• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, Yesterday

IAB Tech Lab has announced a project to standardize container technology for Open RTB, as challenges in development and maintenance of programmatic infrastructure persist.

The Tech Lab Containerization Project Working Group is responsible for leading this effort.

The initiative introduces guidelines for responsible data handling within containers for specific use cases, such as bid request and responses, curation signaling, and fraud detection workflows.

These containers are part of the backend, server-side systems across supply side platforms (SSP) and demand-side platforms (DSP), as well as service providers that power digital advertising.

Standardization will enable programmatic supply-chain participants, such as SSPs and DSPs, to add and swap real-time bidding services partners without compromising efficiency and latency.

The containers can be thought of as small, portable modules that run specific tasks, such as checking for ad fraud or enhancing a bid request, explains Shailley Singh, executive vice president of product and chief operating officer at IAB Tech Lab. “They sit in data centers and talk to each other much faster than the old setup allowed.”

Containers bundle these tasks -- including bid evaluation or fraud checks -- into portable, standardized units.

These containers communicate faster and more efficiently as they are deployed next to the specific system that needs the tasks to be completed. This helps lower latency in the information exchange between systems, Singh wrote in an email to MediaPost.

“This is a big step forward because it cuts down delays and makes everything run smoother,” he wrote, providing an example where bid times could shrink from 500 milliseconds to under 100, which is “huge” in live event advertising.

“It also makes it easier for companies to plug in new partners without everything breaking,” he wrote. “With everyone following the same standards, engineers won’t waste time dealing with compatibility or interoperability issues.”

Today, the system uses older server-to-server connections for tasks, but the Containerization Project will modernize how participants in bidding systems connect.

The next-generation infrastructure is cleaner and more powerful, and is built for programmatic bidding transactions.

Instead of patching old systems, the industry will build this project with faster protocols such as gRPC and defined standards for performance, security, and data handling. The outcome means more scalable and reliability for the future.