7th August 2025 – Brussels, Belgium: IAB Europe has published a new Q&A to explain the roles and functions of the different players in the supply chain and how they cooperate to create a healthy ecosystem, where rogue actors are not welcome. The digital advertising ecosystem relies on a range of actors (advertisers, publishers, platforms, and intermediaries) to deliver relevant ads to consumers, support content creation, and fund a wide variety of online services. The new Q&A outlines who these players are, how they interact, and why their diversity is essential to fostering innovation, competition, and financial sustainability across the online economy.
The Q&A also addresses how the industry works collectively to prevent fraud and limit the influence of rogue actors. It provides an overview of key transparency standards, including ads.txt, sellers.json, the SupplyChain Object, and their demand-side counterparts, and highlights the importance of certification schemes, industry policies, and due diligence in building a secure and trustworthy digital advertising supply chain.
Importantly, the document explains how the Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF) supports GDPR and ePrivacy compliance, and how IAB Europe is strengthening TCF enforcement through dedicated compliance programmes.
The Q&A concludes with concrete recommendations to promote responsible industry behaviour and support ongoing efforts to raise standards across the supply chain.
This document builds on a recent IAB Europe paper that assesses the adoption of supply chain transparency standards with a detailed methodology.
You can view the Q&A document here.
