With the surge of growth in Connected Television (CTV) new formats have surfaced specific to the channel. In 2024, Tech Lab launched Ad Format Hero, to gain market insights on the most widely adopted formats, ripe for standardization. In 2025, the taskforce assembled to define the user experience for these formats, and will continue work in determining how they are bought and sold in the programmatic ecosystem.
Key updates include:
- New CTV Ad Formats Included
- Best Practices for Interoperable Interactivity
- Removed non-linear submission guidelines
- Removed legacy references to Instream, and redirected to established standards in OpenRTB
- Updated Ready-to-Serve formats to four instead of three option, with a focus on CTV/HD as its own column
The IAB Tech Lab Digital Video & CTV Ad Format Guidelines was developed by the Ad Format Hero Taskforce, with inputs from Advanced TV Working Group and Advanced TV Commit Group.
Christophe Kind, Castlabs, Thasso Griebel, Castlabs, Spina Parikh, DIRECT TV Advertising, Angie Carballo DIRECT TV Advertising, Gianluca Milano, Disney, John Hodge, Freewheel, Mark Theophilis, Fubo, Malcolm MacLachlan, Google, Jiawei Liu, Google, Ken Weiner, GumGum, Audrey Danthony, IMPACT+, Jimit Doshi, InMobi, Celine Largy, L’Oreal, Dave Buonasera, Magnite, Kevin Mcgowan, Magnite, Sangeet Mahat NBC Universal, Greg Ramos, NBC Universal, Rishav Jalan, Rembrand, Benjamin Kotzott, smartclip Europe GmbH, Joel Withrow, The Trade Desk, Marko Ma, Tubi, David Sidman, VideoStorm and Olivier Cortambert, YOSPACE IAB Tech Lab Lead: Jill Wittkopp, VP Product, IAB Tech Lab
The IAB Technology Laboratory is a nonprofit research and development consortium charged with producing and helping companies implement global industry technical standards and solutions. The goal of the Tech Lab is to reduce friction associated with the digital advertising and marketing supply chain while contributing to the safe growth of an industry. The IAB Tech Lab spearheads the development of technical standards, creates and maintains a code library to assist in rapid, cost-effective implementation of IAB standards, and establishes a test platform for companies to evaluate the compatibility of their technology solutions with IAB standards, which for 18 years have been the foundation for interoperability and profitable growth in the digital advertising supply chain. Further details about the IAB Technology Lab can be found at https://iabtechlab.com.
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CTV & Digital Video Ad Format Guidelines document is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or write to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, CA 94105, USA.