The programmatic industry has been trying to clean up its act for quite some time. However, this year seems to have been the year when it really made some big steps forward. The Trade Desk, one of the larger programmatic technology companies, has made some big pushes toward a cleaner programmatic environment. The two biggest announcements come in the form of a new partnership with White Ops and the integration of ads.txt across their platform.

The partnership with White Ops, announced on August 31, allows every impression to be scanned and determined whether it is valid before anyone has the opportunity to make a bid on that impression. This would dramatically clean up all the inventory advertisers would have available to bid on. When you consider how valuable an advertiser’s dollars are, it’s of paramount importance to ensure you are in fact bidding on human traffic. This will dramatically increase confidence in an ecosystem that has been at times not the cleanest place.

The newest addition that the Trade Desk has made is the adoption of ads.txt within its platform. For those of you who aren’t familiar with ads.txt, it is a system in which publishers host an ads.txt file on their properties stating whom they work with on the selling of their inventory – whether a direct buyer or reseller. This move helps ensure that you are in fact buying verified inventory rather than possibly purchasing impressions from suppliers who might say they’re verified sellers of a publisher’s inventory, but are in fact not. The ads.txt implementation is another big step forward in cleaning up the supply path within the programmatic ecosystem and ensuring transparency.

This two-pronged attack against ad fraud and cleaning up the supply chain, along with a desire to provide transparency to agencies and clients alike, will help keep the Trade Desk at the front of the campaign to create a cleaner programmatic environment.