The news: The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Tech Lab published Programmatic Standard Practices v1 for public feedback, per MarTech. The document is the first deliverable from an IAB council that was formed to address governance problems in programmatic advertising.

The guidelines set shared business rules for how buyers and sellers should use existing standards and make the supply chain traceable, limit bid caching and pooling and disclose—and properly time—ad refreshes, reduce duplicate requests, protect request integrity, and use accurate placement IDs.

Zooming out: Growing and emerging inventory types increase the need for standardization. We forecast worldwide programmatic digital out-of-home (pDOOH) ad revenues—a format where bid pooling and duplicate requests can go unchecked as spend scales—will increase 9.3% YoY to $2.59 billion in 2026.

Nexxen, Magnite, and TripleLift have all expanded programmatic access to pause ads this year, extending to CTV the same trust questions IAB Tech Lab is now trying to standardize.

Implications for marketers: Consistent rules for IDs, refresh disclosure, and request routing could cut friction across the walled gardens and open-web placements marketers navigate. Standardized IDs and fewer duplicate requests will make it easier to audit where budgets land and spot bid pooling that inflates costs.

As pDOOH and pause ad inventory increase, the number of middlemen that marketers need to track grows too, so clear expectations around traceability give buyers a reference point for evaluating new partners.

However, since the IAB Tech Lab has no authority to require compliance, marketers should expect uneven adoption even after the guidelines are finalized. Press partners to confirm support for the schain and eids objects, ask sellers how they handle bid caching and refresh timing, and treat compliance as a factor in partner evaluation.

Dive deeper: Read our US Programmatic Advertising Forecast and Ad Tech Trends H2 2026 report.

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