MarTech » Digital advertising » Advertisers may finally see who really touches their bid requests

Advertisers may finally see who really touches their bid requests

IAB Tech Lab's proposed SupplyChain v1.1 update could give advertisers a clearer view of every company that touches a programmatic bid request.

Senior Editor, MarTech

Published on June 23, 2026 • Last updated on June 23, 2026 • 3 minutes read

Spy on Any Website

Get traffic data and keyword intel on competitors instantly.

For years, programmatic buyers could see who got paid in a transaction. They rarely saw every company that handled a bid request before it reached them.

IAB Tech Lab wants to change that.

Today, the organization proposed an update to its OpenRTB SupplyChain Object, commonly known as schain, exposing both the commercial and technical journey of a bid request. If adopted, the change could reshape supply-path optimization by showing buyers not just who earned revenue from a transaction, but who touched it along the way.

The proposed standard, SupplyChain v1.1, is available for public comment through Aug. 21, 2026.

Looking beyond the money trail

Today’s schain standard gives buyers visibility into the financial path of a transaction by identifying companies participating in the payment flow. It does not necessarily reveal every company that processes, routes, enriches, or transmits a bid request.

That distinction matters more as programmatic infrastructure grows increasingly complex. A single impression opportunity may pass through ad servers, Prebid implementations, SDKs, server-side ad insertion platforms, wrappers, and other technologies before reaching a buyer.

Under the proposal, buyers could also see those participants. “This is one of the most significant transparency enhancements to the digital advertising supply chain in years,” Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab, said in a release.

The update aims to give buyers a more complete record of inventory available on the open internet.

Why advertisers care

The proposal arrives as advertisers search for ways to reduce waste and optimize supply chains. Much of the industry’s SPO work focuses on finding the shortest path between publisher and buyer. The prevailing assumption is that fewer intermediaries lead to greater efficiency.

SupplyChain v1.1 challenges that assumption.

Longer supply chains do not automatically represent worse supply chains if buyers can see and evaluate every participant. That idea may carry broader implications than the technical update itself.

Instead of simply counting intermediaries, buyers could evaluate what each participant contributes. A supply path with more participants may deliver more value than a shorter one if every participant performs a useful function and the process remains transparent.

The conversation shifts from “How short is this path?” to “Who participates in this path and why?”

Transparency creates winners and losers

Not every company in the ecosystem will welcome that shift.

Advertisers spent years pushing for greater visibility into inventory getting packaged, routed, and sold. More transparency could expose redundant infrastructure, duplicate bid requests, and intermediaries who add little value.

That scrutiny could create challenges for vendors struggling to explain their role in the transaction chain. At the same time, companies delivering measurable value gain a stronger opportunity to distinguish themselves from competitors.

Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up.

The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need.

Start Free Trial

Get started with

The proposal turns technical participation into something buyers can evaluate rather than something hidden behind the scenes.

How the update works

The working group behind the proposal evaluated several implementation approaches before selecting one incorporating technical custody information directly into the existing schain framework. Companies that take technical custody of a request but do not participate in the payment flow would receive an hp=0 designation.

According to IAB Tech Lab, that approach preserves compatibility with the existing standard while expanding visibility into requests as they move through the ecosystem.

The organization also expects longer schains as transparency increases. To support adoption, IAB Tech Lab plans to publish rollout guidance encouraging SSPs and DSPs to conduct staged testing, validate parsing behavior, monitor bid health, and gradually scale traffic using the new specification.

MarTech is owned by Semrush. We remain committed to providing high-quality coverage of marketing topics. Unless otherwise noted, this page’s content was written by either an employee or a paid contractor of Semrush Inc.

Constantine von Hoffman

Senior Editor, MarTech

Constantine von Hoffman is senior editor of MarTech. A veteran journalist, Con has covered business, finance, marketing and tech for CBSNews.com, Brandweek, CMO, and Inc. He has been city editor of the Boston Herald, news producer at NPR, and has written for Harvard Business Review, Boston Magazine, Sierra, and many other publications. He has also been a professional stand-up comedian, given talks at anime and gaming conventions on everything from My Neighbor Totoro to the history of dice and boardgames, and is author of the magical realist novel John Henry the Revelator. He lives in Boston with his wife, Jennifer, and either too many or too few dogs.

View Author Profile

Google's "preferred sources" feature allows users to customize their search results by selecting news outlets they want to see more often in the "Top Stories" section.

Add Martech Now