We’re proud to announce the renewal of our IAB Gold Standard certification. The Gold Standard is all about raising the bar for digital advertising – tackling fraud, improving supply-chain transparency, and putting people first when it comes to ad experiences. 

That aligns naturally with how we work: an identity-free approach built on intent signals, with privacy front and centre. It also matters because the Gold Standard is widely recognised as a marker of operational quality. 

So what does that actually mean in practice? Let’s take a look at how those standards translate into everyday buying decisions and campaign outcomes.

 

Buying authorised inventory with ads.txt and app-ads.txt

Ads.txt and app-ads.txt are some of the most effective tools the industry has for reducing spoofing and unauthorised inventory sales. They help buyers quickly see who’s allowed to sell a publisher’s inventory, while cutting down on the misrepresentation that erodes trust.

Through our DSP and SSP partnerships, Nano prioritises authorised inventory and brand-safety controls as part of our standard buying workflow, leveraging Live Intent signals for categorisation and decisioning

The same approach applies to in-app inventory, with processes designed to support app-ads.txt selection wherever it’s available.

Brand safety isn’t something we treat as a one-off exercise. It’s an ongoing operational discipline. Keeping our brand safety policy and privacy statement up to date helps set clear expectations with partners and guides decisions about where campaigns should – and shouldn’t – run. We also use exclusion lists to steer campaigns away from made-for-advertising (MFA) environments and from domains that don’t meet ads.txt requirements.

Vanja Ilic, Head of Ad Operations, Nano Interactive, said: “Blacklisting domains that are not compliant with ads.txt is essential for providing quality inventory for our clients. It also protects consumers by ensuring ads appear in legitimate, safe environments, while also improving transparency, trust, and efficiency across the advertising ecosystem.”

Vanja continued: “For adops teams, it safeguards revenue, enhances campaign performance, and supports supply path optimisation by removing low-quality or fraudulent inventory. Together, these steps help keep the supply chain cleaner for everyone – giving brands more confidence, publishers a fairer path to revenue, and audiences a better overall experience.”

 

Supporting better ad experiences with the Coalition for Better Ads

User experience is another core part of the Gold Standard, and that’s where the Coalition for Better Ads comes in. Their Better Ads Standards identify formats that consumers find disruptive or frustrating, helping the industry reduce the kinds of ads most likely to drive people to ad blockers.

At Nano Interactive, our compliance work reflects a strong focus on creative quality. That includes clear creative guidelines to avoid non-compliant formats, along with sharing best-practice advice with clients as part of campaign delivery.

 

Backing more sustainable video through IAB Tech Lab standards

Video and CTV are moving fast, which makes consistency and clear signalling more important than ever. As part of our Gold Standard renewal, we support IAB Tech Lab initiatives that bring more clarity to how video ads are described, delivered, and validated across the ecosystem. That includes: 

  • Ad Creative ID Framework (ACIF), which introduces persistent creative identifiers through an ad registration model. 
  • VAST CTV Addendum 2024, which adds guidance and extensions for advanced TV use cases. 
  • RefSettings, on the signalling side, which helps explain how and why ad slots refresh
  • Updated OpenRTB video signals, including the plcmt attribute, which make placement classification more consistent across the supply chain.

Together, these efforts help campaigns run more efficiently and sustainably.

 

Remaining committed to governance, verification, and privacy

Renewing the Gold Standard isn’t just about external checks. It also requires strong internal governance. We’ve rolled out Gold Standard training across relevant teams to ensure a shared understanding of what the certification stands for and how it applies in practice:

  • On brand safety, Nano Interactive continues to hold a TAG Brand Safety Certificate.
  • For measurement and verification, we support the use of leading partners such as Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify, and work with whichever verification providers our clients require.
  • When it comes to privacy and consent, we’re compliant with IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) v2.2 for our category, and we maintain a public TCF resource file for relevant delivery paths.

Ultimately, the IAB Gold Standard matters because it rewards discipline: clear policies, repeatable controls, and a consistent focus on quality and consumer experience. Our renewal reflects that mindset – and strengthens the foundations of privacy-first, ID-free activation for the year ahead.