IAB Tech Lab Forms Programmatic Governance Council To Improve Transparency In $200B U.S. Digital Ad Market

With more than $200 billion in U.S. digital advertising now traded programmatically, industry leaders are moving to strengthen transparency and governance across the marketplace.

IAB Tech Lab, the global digital advertising standards body, has created a Programmatic Governance Council to bring together media buyers, media owners and ad tech platforms and align business expectations with the technical standards underpinning automated trading.

“Programmatic advertising moves billions of dollars every day, but too often the people responsible for it are not sitting together to address operational challenges,” Anthony Katsur, IAB Tech Lab CEO, said. “Programmatic grew fast, but governance hasn’t kept pace with its scale and complexity. Without alignment, inefficiencies risk becoming entrenched.”

Initial participants include leaders from agencies, publishers and platforms such as Dentsu, Omnicom Media Group, WPP, Disney, Magnite, PubMatic, Hearst, News Corp, Yahoo, Amazon Ads, The Trade Desk, Raptive and Mediavine.

The council plans to produce a formal charter and workstreams, followed by an initial governance framework and recommendations over the next 6 to 12 months. Early priorities include auction transparency, more consistent handling of transaction signals and stronger alignment among buyers, sellers and platforms on trustworthy execution to help buyers direct spend to supply chain partners that provide clear value.

Programmatic advertising’s complexity and fragmented practices have long challenged advertisers and publishers. Recent debates over transaction IDs, bid duplication and auction mechanics have highlighted inconsistent signal handling and opacity.

“The scale of programmatic means agencies are responsible for navigating a massive supply chain on behalf of advertisers,” Ben Hovaness, Omnicom Media Group chief media officer, said. “Our clients expect clarity about where their money goes and how media is 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 become more embedded in ad workflows, IAB Tech Lab said shared governance and clearly defined standards will be central to maintaining transparency, accountability and scalability across the ecosystem.

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