Impression Exchange Solution

PLEASE NOTE: FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS DOCUMENT UPDATED MARCH 2010

Download IAB Impression Exchange Standard Functional Requirements

Description of Problem
Publishers and Third Party Ad Servers (TPAS) manage campaign data in different ways. This can result in a mismatching of aggregated line items between the TPAS and the publisher. During the course of a discrepancy resolution, this mismatch can make it impossible to reconcile which publisher placement experienced what portion of the discrepancy.

Furthermore, publishers must manually retrieve 3^rd party data in order to compare it with internal numbers. The extra time spent retrieving data deters publishers from doing regular comparisons of their numbers to those of the TPAS. This leads to the perpetuation of discrepancies, sometimes to the end of the billing period, that could otherwise have been resolved very easily had the 3^rd party reports been readily available for publishers.

This standard identifies the minimum functional requirements necessary for an automated exchange of 3^rd party data that will allow publishers to identify and compare line items in their system with the TPAS Reports.

Goal
Allow publishers to receive automated 3^rd party delivery reports on a daily basis that enable easy integration with publisher systems for comparison with their line items.

Scope
Version 1.0 beta will focus on one-way reporting: from the agency system to the publisher. The TPAS will leave a placeholder for the publisher to then define an ID and insert it into the tag. When a request goes from the publisher to the TPAS for the ad, it will be read and recorded by that TPAS. The reporting will then be built from these records.

Timeline
Q3 of 2009 for beta release where beta partners will work together to implement and test the first version of the Solution.