Zap Bites 002: Ads.txt + Cease & Desist Coming?

We recently started to serve a campaign on a very small whitelist for a client across multiple DSPs—at Digital Remedy we use a media-agnostic strategy to exceed digital and performance goals by using industry leading media sources in conjunction with our proprietary platforms. One of the DSPs was pacing far better and clearing at lower prices on this campaign. When we started to analyze all the reports, we saw that one website in particular was getting a large share of the impressions from this specific DSP. We ran a subsequent report on the sources of the traffic, and noticed the DSP in question was purchasing impressions for that specific website through an SSP that was not listed on the publisher’s ads.txt file. When we contacted the DSP in question, they claimed that buying only on ads.txt is not auto-enabled; however, available, to which we quickly standardized by default on all campaigns.

Through various channels, we contacted the website about the issue. But what is a publisher supposed to do? In this era, until trade organizations and other organizations require full enforcement of ads.txt across DSPs, a publisher’s only recourse is to send a cease and desist letter before commencing legal action. This type of arbitraging will stop once Bidders are forced to listen to ads.txt. Then, as a result, we will see a fallout of no value players shrinking in our space.