NEW YORK—IAB Tech Lab, the global digital advertising technical standards-setting body, has announced the release of device attestation support in the industry standard Open Measurement SDK (OM SDK).
This new capability is supported on Apple devices and Amazon Fire TV and is designed to further strengthen efforts to combat widespread device spoofing and to provide buyers, sellers and verification companies with greater confidence in the environments where ads are delivered, the lab said.
“OM SDK gave buyers standardized, consistent measurement metrics across screens and devices,” IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur said. “The Device Attestation capability builds on that and provides a critical next step for CTV growth. Buyers should prioritize the OM SDK because it is the only measurement standard built on device-native signals, not inferred data. And with attestation, they can be confident the inventory they are measuring is real.”
The new capability helps address a fundamental vulnerability in connected TV and mobile advertising: the misrepresentation of device information or device spoofing, where bad actors falsify device information to appear as premium inventory. This leads to wasted ad spend for buyers and lost revenue for sellers, the IAB Tech Lab explained.
Adopting IETF's Privacy Pass Protocol for the digital ads verification use case, the Device Attestation capability in OM SDK enables buyers to independently verify they are buying genuine CTV and mobile inventory from sellers, thanks to privacy-preserving attestations made by device manufacturers for their devices. This adds another valuable signal that can strengthen the industry's ability to detect and prevent device spoofing, the IAB reported.
“Device spoofing is a significant attack vector for bad actors generating invalid traffic across several General and Sophisticated IVT categories required to be detected and filtered as part of MRC Standards,” Ron Pinelli, senior vice president of digital research and standards, Media Rating Council (MRC), said. “MRC appreciates the opportunity to be involved in and support the development of this important enhancement to OM SDK that can be used by the ad-tech ecosystem to enhance IVT detection and measurement capabilities.”
This release builds on the OM SDK’s role as a shared measurement foundation since 2018, enabling third-party verification of impressions and viewability across CTV and mobile environments. Device attestation in OM SDK takes verification even further, helping the industry build trust in individual sellers and supply paths by allowing participants to demonstrate the authenticity of devices in the inventory they are selling, the group said.
For buyers, device attestation means cleaner measurement and reduced waste from fraudulent inventory. For sellers and app developers, it protects monetization by signaling attested supply paths. For verification companies, it creates a new seller and supply chain-level signal representing device authenticity.
"Device-spoofing represents a significant threat in today's advertising landscape," said Neal Richter, director, Amazon DSP, Amazon Ads. "By receiving secure signals of authenticity directly from supported CTV devices like Fire TV, we can be confident that we're getting inventory from real devices. As adoption of this new capability increases across the industry, we'll be able to independently verify that we're buying genuine CTV inventory, ultimately creating more transparency and trust in CTV advertising."
"Device attestation represents a fundamental shift in how we combat device spoofing by creating a positive signal of device authenticity," said Geoff Stupay, senior vice president, global head of product at cybersecurity firm HUMAN. "We're extremely pleased to have collaborated with the OM SDK Commit Group to develop this capability, which will help buyers confidently identify quality CTV and mobile inventory and give sellers a way to differentiate their trusted supply paths."
The IAB Tech Lab said that Device Attestation in OM SDK release reflects collaboration across the Open Measurement Commit Group, which includes a range of technical stakeholders from across the industry. Participating companies include AdsWizz, Amazon Ads, DoubleVerify, Google, HUMAN and Integral Ad Science. This cross-industry participation ensures the framework is both technically rigorous and scalable across environments, IAB Tech Lab said.
To learn more about Device Attestation in OM SDK and how to implement it, visit https://iabtechlab.com/standards/open-measurement-sdk/.
