Documentation
ads.txt and sellers.json
The two files that let a buyer verify who is authorised to sell which inventory. This page sets out the line a publisher adds and what the reciprocal file declares.
Status
No integration depends on these files: the tag, the beacon, the click and the postback all work without them.
The line a publisher will add
Once the identifiers exist, a publisher will add a line of this shape to the ads.txt file at the root of their domain.
<seller domain>, <seller account id>, DIRECTThe placeholders are deliberate: a publisher who copied a plausible-looking line would end up with a file that fails validation, and the error would surface in a buyer's tooling rather than in ours.
What sellers.json will contain
The reciprocal document: who we are and what relationship we have with the inventory we sell.
It will declare this network's identifier and domain and its relationship type with each seller. Agreement between what a publisher declares in their ads.txt and what we declare here is exactly what makes the pair verifiable.
Each entry also carries a confidentiality setting, which has commercial consequences for the publisher and will be documented here alongside the file itself.