Ads.txt, a text-based file, was brought into the programmatic advertising ecosystem by IAB Tech Laboratory in May 2017 to prevent fraudulent applications and unauthorized inventory sales. For this purpose, the transparency deficiencies among ad buyer, seller, and programmatic inventory provider were aimed to be eliminated.
Viewed from a historical perspective, fraudulent applications that are known as ad fraud have always been a problem in the world of digital advertising. In fact, approximately 6 billion dollars are spent every year to prevent this problem, according to some sources. In this sense, there have been studies to produce possible solutions for many years. One of these solutions is the ads.txt which is the new project of IAB Tech Laboratory.
So, what kind of solutions in terms of security does ads.txt offer?
At the time when ad spaces were sold in traditional ways and the programmatic technology was not yet widespread, impression sales and purchases were carried out one by one. For this reason, important resources, such as time and money were used quite inefficiently compared to the programmatic. However, SSPs that have the programmatic technology in which all the process takes place automatically in split seconds, make the lives of the publishers who prefer to use them considerably easier. 
