IAB Tech Lab Releases Content Taxonomy 3.0; Continues Investment in SDA’s Contextual Features within CTV, Mobile, and News Content

The IAB Tech Lab is continuing to invest in our Taxonomy portfolio, today finalizing Content Taxonomy 3.0 from its public comment period.

While core principles and taxonomical structures remain unchanged from 2.x, this update contains several important refinements to both orthogonal vectors and primary “aboutness” categories. Together, these updates will continue to support the industry’s evolving contextual targeting needs via approaches like Tech Lab’s Seller Defined Audiences specification, which relies heavily on standardized signaling from its Content and Audience Taxonomies in place of deprecated cookie and ID currencies.

Key updates include:

CTV/Video: CTV buyers and sellers now have more flexibility labeling content via new “entertainment genres” within Content Taxonomy 3.0
News Content: we made taxonomical updates to ensure that labeling of news related content was streamlined and clarified. Among other improvements, “News” and “Opinion & Op-Ed” are now distinct vector labels and not taxonomically related. Given heightened concern around media responsibility and transparency leading up to the midterms in the US, we wanted to give advertisers more visibility into the type of news inventory they are buying. The previous classification of “Opinion & Op-Ed” as a sibling of “News” complicated this important differentiation. This update intended to help support a sustainable news category for both advertisers and publishers and ensure visibility into potentially brand unsafe environments.
Podcasts, Games, and Mobile Apps: more granular categories were added to better support these forms of media, including mappings to the categories supported by the most common platforms within each channel.

We’re excited about the opportunities the new Content Taxonomy will provide for the ecosystem. As always, we’ll continue to iterate on our work based on the needs of the industry. Please don’t hesitate to reach out with questions or feedback.