IAB Tech Lab Launches Industry Council to Address Transparency in $200B U.S. Programmatic Ad Market

 Dentsu, Omnicom Media Group, WPP, Disney, Magnite, PubMatic, Hearst, News Corp, Yahoo, Amazon Ads, The Trade Desk, Raptive, and Mediavine Participate in Council

NEW YORK, April 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- With more than $200 billion in digital advertising now traded programmatically in the United States and automation increasingly shaping how media is bought and sold, industry leaders are moving to bring greater transparency and governance to the digital advertising marketplace.

IAB Tech Lab, the global digital advertising technical standard-setting body, today announced the creation of the Programmatic Governance Council, a new industry body designed to bring together media buyers, media owners, and ad tech platforms to ensure that programmatic advertising's automation and AI reshape digital advertising.

"Programmatic advertising moves billions of dollars every day, but too often the people responsible for it are not sitting together to deal with the real operational problems," said Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab. "Programmatic grew incredibly fast, but the governance around how that market should operate hasn't kept pace with its scale, complexity, and automation. If we don't generate alignment quickly, we risk cementing these inefficiencies into the fabric of every transaction."

Initial participants include leadership from agencies, publishers, and platforms across the ecosystem, including organizations such as Dentsu, Omnicom Media Group, WPP, Disney, Magnite, PubMatic, Hearst, News Corp, Yahoo, Amazon Ads, The Trade Desk, Raptive, and Mediavine, among others.

The industry should expect concrete outputs from the council, beginning with a formal charter and workstreams, followed by an initial governance framework and recommendations connecting business expectations to the technical infrastructure of programmatic trading. Over the next 6–12 months, the goal is to provide clearer guidance on auction transparency, more consistent handling of transaction signals, and stronger alignment between buyers, sellers, and platforms on what trustworthy programmatic execution should look like. This will help buyers direct spend to supply chain partners, providing clear value.

Programmatic advertising has long been described as complex and opaque. Fragmented infrastructure, inconsistent practices, and limited shared governance have made it difficult for advertisers and publishers to operate with full confidence in the system. Recent market discussions around transaction IDs, bid duplication, and auction transparency have highlighted how differences in programmatic signal handling and auction mechanics can create confusion and friction across the ecosystem.

The council aims to address those concerns by giving senior industry leaders a structured forum to align on how business expectations should connect to the technical standards that underpin digital advertising transactions.

"The scale of programmatic means agencies are responsible for navigating a massive supply chain on behalf of advertisers," said Ben Hovaness, Chief Media Officer at Omnicom Media Group. "Our clients expect clarity about where their money goes and how media is actually traded. Sitting down with publishers and platforms to work through these issues together is how you move from talking about transparency to actually creating it."

As automation and AI-driven systems become more deeply embedded in digital advertising workflows, shared governance and clearly defined standards will play a critical role in ensuring the ecosystem remains transparent, accountable, and scalable for advertisers, publishers, and technology partners alike.

To learn more, please visit https://iabtechlab.com/working-groups/programmatic-governance-council/ 

About IAB Technology Laboratory
Established in 2014, the IAB Technology Laboratory (Tech Lab) is a non-profit consortium that engages a member community globally to develop foundational technology and standards that enable growth and trust in the digital media ecosystem. Comprised of digital publishers, ad technology firms, agencies, brands, and other member companies, IAB Tech Lab focuses on solutions for brand safety and ad fraud; identity, data, and consumer privacy; cross-channel programmatic effectiveness and ad measurement; and the impact of LLMs and AI agents on advertising. Its work includes the OpenRTB real-time bidding protocol, ads.txt anti-fraud specification, Open Measurement SDK for viewability and verification, VAST video specification, Trusted Server, and the Agentic Roadmap initiative for agentic advertising. Board members and companies are listed at https://iabtechlab.com/about-the-iab-tech-lab/tech-lab-leadership/. For more information, please visit https://iabtechlab.com.

SOURCE IAB Tech Lab