An update, following Google’s delaying by a month implementing new rules around Sellers.json – to the end of October.

We know well the process of adopting ads.txt, led by the IAB a few years back, and how it’s been really helpful in reducing some types of fraud. Specifically, fraudulent sites impersonating publishers, or even selling their inventory without permission.

While technical updates and infrastructure can’t protect us from all misuses of any system, it’s important we fully understand, prepare for and where possible adopt such new standards – even where the timelines are not quite so clear.

This is about being good citizens, for sure, for the benefit of the wider ecosystem – and to build trust overall. But also, where these changes are fair, and especially where they are requested by the buy side – at the premium end of the market, to lead by example, as well as backing your image with action.

Last and most certainly not least, there are clearly practical, by which I mean financial reasons too, which we’ll get on to – with specific examples later on. 

From ads.txt to Sellers.json and Supply Chain Object

The latest industry initiatives, following on from ads.txt, go together, and are confusingly called sellers.json and schain, even though, in this case they don’t apply only to the seller.

As Digiday explains, these new additions are here to take transparency in media trading further – and apply to exchanges, SSPs and resellers on the sell-side – more specifically, allowing agencies and brands to differentiate between those that benefit the ecosystem and add value, and those that may be bad actors, or simply shouldn’t be there.

Sellers.json works similarly to ads.txt, where each partner lists which other services it works with. And this feeds into supply chain object or Schain, which is a transparent record, for every transaction, of all of the parties that were involved.  

Google’s Next Steps 

Google gave publishers a deadline to get their sellers.json setups in order, and this has already passed. Fortunately, since we don’t all have our houses in order yet, an extra month’s time has now been given, with the new deadline falling at the end of October.

For what might happen after that, it’s worth looking at what occurred in the US a while back. 

Stateside, the Trade Desk is, as you probably already know, one of leaders of the buy side and subsequently a DSP which is leading many of these changes. It was also notably the first to adopt ads.txt. TTD also launched not long ago a team here in the Nordics – all the more reason this topic is relevant to us here.

Last year, TTD called for sellers to choose between one of Prebid and its alternatives header bidding options, to reduce bid request volume and therefore its running costs, as traffic rocketed at the time.

It gave publishers a deadline for this of just two weeks. And we understand a previous request, to incorporate sellers.json and Schain involved a similar sort of turnaround, the previous year.

All of which is a roundabout way of pointing out that such changes can arrive over the hill all at once – and they don’t wait around either. Not being set up correctly for sellers.json and Schain in time could mean a direct revenue hit, where Trade Desk (and soon Google too) no longer recognises revenue from your usual chosen partners.

On the other side, now as ever, we always have to consider development queues and technical departments’ limited time. And Google may have given us an extra month to get all of these steps in line, but further deadline extensions look less likely.

For what might be the addition of 10 lines of code, as far as we can see, sooner is definitely better, especially as it doesn’t add any extra page load. And as we’ve already seen in the US, sellers.json and supply chain object will have a direct revenue impact if we don’t realise the time to act is right now.

Facts & Action Points

• Google announced that they are postponing the first step of their enforcement of sellers.json until October 30th. 

• The deadline for 30th September (now October 30th) only applies in you already are live with schain – however Google has announced they will start enforcing this fully by the end of the year.

• Please get in touch with your Netric account manager for any advice on what you need to do.