IAB Tech Lab launches new Tool Repository with a viewability SDK

The Tech Lab at the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has made its first acquisition for a new Tool Repository.

The Lab announced late last week that it will take over control of an initiative originally conceived and developed by Integral Ad Science (IAS), an ad verification and measurement service.

Called the Mobile Verification Open-Source Software Development Kit and expected to be released in the first half of this year, it helps app publishers set up monitoring of in-app ads without relying on multiple SDKs from multiple ad platforms or other partners.

For the time being, Lab GM Alanna Gombert told me, the SDK is focused only on monitoring in-app banners’ viewability, but it might be extended at some point to help monitor other kinds of in-app ads.

The Lab said this open-source SDK will also benefit user experience for participating apps, because there will be a faster load time without so many SDKs having to run their own viewability verifications. IAB said that it will work with various ad tech firms to further develop the SDK, including Google, InMobi, Moat, Twitter’s MoPub and The Trade Desk, as well as advertising industry organizations and the Media Rating Council.

Gombert said the intention of the Tool Repository is to create frameworks through which various vendors can implement specific functions.

The IAS SDK, she noted, doesn’t actually generate viewability measurements, but it provides a kind of “shelf space” for vendors.

Gombert said a second, unnamed framework tool for the Tool Repository is “pending,” and that it similarly has code written by others. Tools acquired by the Repository will only relate to advertising, she said, and will focus on providing commonly used frameworks — such as scripts, wrappers or containers, in addition to SDKs — rather than fully functional applications.

They won’t “create a revenue event,” she said. “We’re not in the business of competing with our members.”

[Article on MarTech Today.]

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.