• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, September 19, 2013

IAB's Programmatic Publishers Task Force this morning released their first whitepaper, titled "Programmatic And Automation - The Publisher's Perspective." The purpose of the whitepaper, just like the Publishers Task Force, is to address confusion in the marketplace. It also identifies key definitions for the industry to align under, namely in the "Which one of the many types of programmatic is that?" department.

In a company blog post released in conjunction with the whitepaper, IAB wrote, "There is significant confusion in the marketplace around the meaning of terms like  'programmatic,' 'RTB,' 'programmatic direct,' 'programmatic premium,' and other verbiage, often being used interchangeably. New technologies are emerging which are creating significant value, but there is also a lack of clear technical standards to ensure interoperability across different platforms."

The whitepaper breaks down four distinct types of programmatic transactions: Automated Guaranteed, Unreserved Fixed Rate, Invitation-Only Auctions, and Open Auctions. All except for Automated Guaranteed deal with unreserved inventory. Automated Guaranteed and Unreserved Fixed Rate are done on a one seller-one buyer level. Invitation Auctions are done from one-to-few, and Open Auctions are done from one-to-all.

In addition to those four types of transactions, the whitepaper offers other areas of consideration for programmatic traders: prioritization in the ad server, deal ID, data usage, transparency, and price floors.

The company noted in their blog post that today's whitepaper is "the first in a new IAB educational series that offers easy-to-understand documents for the industry." The whitepaper offers more in-depth definitions for the four types of programmatic transactions as well as the "other considerations" a programmatic trader needs to be aware of. The full whitepaper can be found here as a PDF.