A curated list of high-signal resources for engineers building programmatic advertising systems — OpenRTB protocols, real-time bidders, SSPs, identity, privacy frameworks, auction theory, and the infrastructure that runs underneath all of it.
This list is opinionated toward the engineering side of AdTech: protocols, reference implementations, infrastructure trade-offs, performance work, and the deep-end of how DSPs, SSPs, and ad servers actually get built and operated at production scale.
Maintained by Charles — Engineering Lead working on high-QPS DSPs and OpenRTB protocol stacks.
- Specifications & Standards
- Open-Source Bidders & Servers
- Header Bidding
- DSP / SSP Architecture Reading
- Privacy & Consent
- Identity & Resolution
- Mobile In-App
- CTV & OTT
- Programmatic OOH
- Audio Advertising
- Retail Media
- Verification, Brand Safety & IVT
- Auction Theory & Bidding Algorithms
- Pacing & Budget Distribution
- Storage & Real-Time Infrastructure
- Performance, Profiling & JVM
- Observability & Tracing
- Datasets & Research
- News & Trade Publications
- Newsletters
- Podcasts
- Conferences & Events
- Communities & Forums
- Books
- Career & Hiring
- Contributing
- License
The foundational documents every AdTech engineer should keep on the desktop.
- IAB Tech Lab - The standards body behind OpenRTB, VAST, OMID, GPP, and most other AdTech specs.
- OpenRTB Specs (GitHub) - Canonical home of OpenRTB 2.x and 3.0 protocol drafts.
- OpenRTB 2.6 Specification - Latest published 2.x version with DOOH support, CTV pod bidding, and impression metrics.
- OpenRTB 3.0 + AdCOM 1.0 - Next-generation split between protocol (OpenRTB 3) and content model (AdCOM).
- VAST 4.3 - Video Ad Serving Template, the lingua franca of video advertising.
- SIMID 1.1 - Modern replacement for VPAID; decouples interactivity from execution.
- Open Measurement SDK (OMID) - Industry-standard viewability and verification SDK.
- MRC Standards - Ad measurement standards every major buy-side and sell-side platform follows.
- ads.txt / app-ads.txt - Public records of authorized digital sellers.
- ads.cert 2.0 - Cryptographic supply path authentication.
- sellers.json - Sell-side identity disclosure for supply-chain transparency.
- Buyers.json - Buy-side counterpart to sellers.json for DSP transparency.
- SupplyChain Object - Inventory provenance object passed inside OpenRTB requests.
- DOOH OpenRTB Extensions - Imp object fields specific to digital out-of-home.
- Audio OpenRTB Extensions - Audio-specific extensions on top of OpenRTB.
- Open Programmatic Audio (OPA) - Audio ad delivery and measurement specs.
- DAAST - Digital Audio Ad Serving Template.
- Pod Bidding - OpenRTB extensions for CTV ad pod auctions.
- Server-Guided Ad Insertion (SGAI) - The successor to client-side and server-side ad stitching.
- Open RTB JSON Schema - Maintained JSON schemas for OpenRTB validation.
- IAB Tech Lab Spider/Bot List - Industry list of known non-human user agents.
- VPAID 2.0 (Deprecated) - Historical reference; replaced by SIMID and OMID.
Reference implementations, test harnesses, and production-ready stacks.
- Prebid Server (Go) - The most widely-deployed open-source server-side header-bidding implementation.
- Prebid Server (Java) - Java port maintained by Magnite, a great reference for OpenRTB on the JVM.
- Prebid.js - Browser-side header-bidding library, the de facto industry standard.
- Prebid Mobile iOS - In-app header-bidding SDK for iOS.
- Prebid Mobile Android - Android counterpart to the iOS SDK.
- Prebid Universal Creative - Render-time creative wrapper used in Prebid auctions.
- Google OpenRTB Java SDK - Battle-tested OpenRTB protocol models in Java with JSON and Protobuf serializers.
- RTB4Free - Open-source RTB bidder originally seeded for educational use.
- bsm/openrtb (Go) - Lean Go OpenRTB structs, useful for implementing bidders or fuzzers.
- Magnite SpringServe - Open ad server / SSP for CTV and video.
- Vapor - Reference VAST parser for IAB.
- VAST Parser (jeremyrosen/vast-tools) - Lightweight VAST parser libraries for various languages.
- OMID JS - JavaScript client for the Open Measurement SDK.
- OMID iOS / Android - Native SDK reference implementations.
- Prebid Documentation - Canonical reference for both client-side and server-side Prebid.
- Prebid Adapter Submission Guide - Step-by-step on writing a bid adapter that gets merged.
- Prebid Server Bidder Params - Server-side bidder parameter reference.
- Prebid Auction Lifecycle - End-to-end overview of how a Prebid auction runs in the browser.
- Header Bidding Wiki (AdMonsters) - Glossary and explainers from the publisher-ops community.
- Open Bidding (Google) - Google's exchange-to-exchange header bidding implementation.
- Amazon TAM - Amazon's server-side header bidding wrapper.
- Index Exchange Wrapper Solutions - One of the most-deployed alternative wrappers to Prebid.
- Building a Real-Time Bidding System (Liftoff) - Liftoff's engineering blog covers bidder design from a mobile-DSP perspective.
- Moloco Engineering Blog - Posts on ML-driven bidding and the operational reality of running a DSP.
- Magnite Engineering - Sell-side perspective from one of the largest independent SSPs.
- PubMatic Blog - SSP tech blog covering supply-side engineering.
- Criteo Engineering - Heavy ML/retargeting content from a major retargeting platform.
- Adikteev Engineering - Mobile re-engagement DSP, posts on bidder internals.
- Adjoe Engineering - In-app advertising platform engineering posts.
- The Trade Desk Tech - Press releases and occasional engineering announcements.
- DoubleVerify Engineering - Verification and measurement engineering posts.
- HUMAN Security Research - Threat reports and case studies on bot traffic and ad fraud.
- AppsFlyer Engineering - Mobile attribution and big-data infrastructure deep-dives.
- Adjust Engineering - Mobile attribution platform engineering content.
- LiveRamp Engineering - Identity resolution, data clean room engineering.
- Quantcast Engineering - Audience measurement and DSP engineering posts.
- Xandr Engineering Archive - Historical posts from when Xandr was independent (acquired by Microsoft).
- IAB Europe TCF 2.2 - Dominant consent framework for EEA traffic.
- TCF 2.x GitHub - Source of truth for the spec, vendor list, and CMP API.
- TCF Vendor List - Live JSON of registered TCF 2.2 vendors.
- IAB Global Privacy Platform (GPP) - Multi-jurisdiction successor that bundles TCF, USP, and US state signals.
- GPP String Encoder - Online tool for inspecting and encoding GPP strings.
- Privacy Sandbox - Google's umbrella initiative for cookieless advertising on Chrome.
- Topics API - Browser-native interest-based advertising replacement for third-party cookies.
- Protected Audience API - On-device retargeting (formerly FLEDGE).
- Attribution Reporting API - Privacy-preserving conversion measurement.
- Private Aggregation API - Differential-privacy-style aggregation for cross-site measurement.
- Fenced Frames - Sandboxed iframes used by Protected Audience.
- Storage Access API - Controlled access to cross-site storage.
- Related Website Sets - First-party set successor for cross-domain functionality.
- App Tracking Transparency (Apple) - Source of truth for iOS ATT.
- Apple Privacy Manifests - Required disclosure files for SDKs collecting data.
- California Privacy Protection Agency - CPPA, regulator for CCPA/CPRA enforcement.
- Virginia VCDPA Reference - Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act statute.
- Privacy Sandbox Status (Chromium) - Engineering-side launch status of each Sandbox API.
- Mozilla Anti-Tracking Policy - Firefox's reference policy that drives ETP behavior.
- Safari Privacy - WebKit ITP and tracking prevention engineering documentation.
- DSAR Tooling (OneTrust) - One of the dominant CMPs and privacy-rights workflow vendors.
- Didomi Developer Docs - CMP integration reference, Europe-focused.
- Unified ID 2.0 (IAB Tech Lab) - Open-source deterministic ID built on hashed emails.
- UID 2.0 Operator Source - Reference operator implementation for UID2.
- ID5 - Cookieless probabilistic + deterministic ID with broad SSP coverage.
- LiveRamp RampID - People-based identity graph used heavily in CRM-driven verticals.
- LiveRamp ATS - Authenticated traffic solution for first-party identity activation.
- The Trade Desk OpenPath - TTD's direct supply path initiative.
- The Trade Desk Galileo - First-party data activation product layered on UID2.
- Permutive - Cohort-based first-party data activation platform.
- Adstra - Identity graph vendor focused on people-based marketing.
- Lotame Panorama ID - Cookieless cross-channel identity solution.
- Criteo Identity - Criteo's first-party identity strategy post-cookie deprecation.
- Yahoo ConnectID - Yahoo's authenticated email-based identity solution.
- Apple SKAdNetwork - Apple's privacy-preserving install attribution framework.
- SKAdNetwork 4.0 (Apple) - SKAN 4 release notes covering hierarchical conversion values.
- SKAN 4.0 Postback Mapping (AppsFlyer) - Practical engineer-grade overview of SKAN postbacks.
- Apple AdAttributionKit - SKAN's successor for App Store and re-engagement attribution.
- AppsFlyer Developer Hub - One of the two dominant MMP SDKs and APIs.
- Adjust Developer Docs - The other dominant MMP, with strong CTV/OTT measurement support.
- Branch Documentation - Deep-link plus attribution platform.
- Singular Documentation - Marketing analytics and attribution platform.
- Kochava Developer Hub - Mobile measurement platform with cross-device support.
- Google Play Install Referrer - Android-side install referral source.
- Google Privacy Sandbox on Android - Topics, Attribution Reporting, and SDK Runtime APIs for Android.
- Android Advertising ID Reset - Policy and behavior reference for AAID.
- IAB Tech Lab Digital Video Suite - VAST, SIMID, OMID, SGAI, and pod bidding under one umbrella.
- Server-Guided Ad Insertion (SGAI) - The successor to client-side and server-side ad stitching.
- OpenRTB CTV Extensions - Pod bidding fields, content categories, and connected-TV-specific signals.
- Innovid CTV Resources - Resources from one of the dominant CTV ad servers.
- SpringServe - CTV and video ad server with public engineering content.
- FreeWheel Documentation - Comcast's ad-management and SSI platform.
- Roku Ads Manager - Roku's CTV ad platform documentation.
- Samba TV ACR - Automatic content recognition for CTV measurement.
- VIZIO Inscape - VIZIO's smart-TV data and measurement platform.
- Conviva - Streaming-quality and ad measurement platform.
- Place Exchange - Programmatic OOH marketplace with public DOOH OpenRTB extensions.
- Vistar Media - DOOH SSP with public engineering blog content.
- VIOOH - JCDecaux-backed DOOH platform.
- Hivestack - Programmatic DOOH platform acquired by Perion.
- DPAA - Industry association for digital OOH.
- IAB Open Programmatic Audio - Audio ad delivery and measurement specs.
- DAAST - Digital Audio Ad Serving Template.
- Spotify Ad Studio - Spotify's self-serve audio ad platform.
- Triton Digital - Audio measurement and ad serving for podcast and radio.
- Megaphone - Spotify-owned podcast platform with programmatic audio integration.
- Amazon Advertising API - Amazon Ads sponsored products / sponsored brands API.
- Amazon DSP - Amazon's demand-side platform.
- Amazon Marketing Cloud - Clean-room analytics layer over Amazon Ads.
- Walmart Connect - Walmart's retail media network.
- Criteo Retail Media - Criteo's retail media offering across multiple retailers.
- Pacvue - Retail media optimization platform across Amazon, Walmart, and others.
- Skai (formerly Kenshoo) - Cross-channel digital marketing platform with retail media focus.
- IAB Retail Media Guidance - Industry buyer's guide for retail media networks.
- MRC Standards - Industry definitions for sophisticated invalid traffic and viewability.
- HUMAN Security Research - Threat reports and case studies on bot traffic and ad fraud.
- DoubleVerify Knowledge Base - DV's measurement and brand-safety APIs.
- DoubleVerify Authentic Ad - Reference for verification methodology.
- IAS Insider - IAS's research blog with verification deep-dives.
- Pixalate Insights - Trust-and-safety research, IVT detection.
- Adloox - Verification provider with European focus.
- Moat by Oracle - Viewability and analytics, now sunset but still referenced.
- GARM Brand Safety Floor - Global Alliance for Responsible Media's brand safety taxonomy.
- TAG (Trustworthy Accountability Group) - Anti-fraud and brand safety industry program.
- ads.cert 2.0 - Cryptographic supply path authentication.
- Bitdefender Adversarial Lab - Threat research relevant to ad-fraud botnet analysis.
- Vickrey Auction (Original Paper) - Counterspeculation, Auctions, and Competitive Sealed Tenders (1961).
- GSP Auction Paper (Edelman, Ostrovsky, Schwarz) - Internet advertising and the generalized second-price auction.
- First-Price Auctions in Display (Google Research) - Bidding economics under first-price across exchanges.
- Bid Shading via Win-Rate Estimation (arXiv) - Practical bid shading framework.
- Optimal No-Regret Learning in Repeated First-Price Auctions - Theoretical foundations for online bid shading.
- Bid Shading in The Brave New World of First-Price Auctions - Engineering-grade overview of bid-shading models.
- A Practical Guide to Bid Shading (Beeswax / FreeWheel) - Vendor-published primers on bid shading approaches.
- Real-Time Bidding by Reinforcement Learning - RL applied to RTB bidder design.
- Display Advertising with Real-Time Bidding (Wang, Zhang, Yuan) - Comprehensive survey paper on RTB.
- Programmatic Auction Mechanics (Adservers.org) - Educational walkthrough of auction internals.
- Smart Pacing for Display Advertising (Yahoo Research) - Foundational pacing paper.
- Budget Pacing for Targeted Online Advertising at LinkedIn - Production pacing system at scale.
- Optimal Bidding, Allocation and Budget Spending for a Demand Side Platform with Generic Auction Type - Joint optimization of pacing and bidding.
- PID Controllers in Ad Pacing (StackOverflow Discussion) - Background reading on PID, the algorithm class behind most pacing implementations.
- Liftoff Engineering on Pacing - Mobile-DSP-side blog posts on pacing and frequency capping in production.
The infrastructure layer that bidders, pacing engines, and event pipelines actually run on.
- Aerospike Documentation - Most common hot-storage choice for user-profile lookup at 100K+ QPS.
- Aerospike AdTech Use Cases - Vendor-published reference patterns for DSP and DMP profile stores.
- Aerospike vs Redis Benchmark - Vendor benchmarks (read with skepticism, but useful baselines).
- ScyllaDB - Cassandra-compatible NoSQL with low-latency C++ runtime, used in some bidders.
- Apache Cassandra - Eventually-consistent NoSQL still common in DMP/CDP stacks.
- ClickHouse - Columnar OLAP database used heavily for AdTech reporting and analytics.
- Apache Druid - Real-time time-series database, the historic AdTech analytics workhorse.
- Apache Pinot - LinkedIn-bred competitor to Druid for ad-hoc OLAP at scale.
- Apache Kafka - Event backbone for impression, click, and bid logs.
- Apache Pulsar - Multi-tenant messaging system used as Kafka alternative.
- Apache Flink - Common stream-processing engine for real-time pacing and frequency capping.
- Apache Spark Streaming - Heavier-weight alternative for batch-leaning streaming workloads.
- Redis - Frequency caps, rate limits, deduplication, and small-payload hot lookups.
- Redis Bloom - Bloom filters and HyperLogLog for cardinality estimation.
- Memcached - Simple distributed cache, still common in bidders for hot lookups.
- DynamoDB - Managed key-value store, used by AdTech teams to avoid operating Aerospike.
- Amazon S3 - Cold storage for bid logs and event archives.
- Async Profiler - The JVM profiler of choice when chasing sub-50ms p99 latency in bidders.
- JMH - Java Microbenchmark Harness, essential for proving any latency claim.
- JFR (Java Flight Recorder) - Built-in low-overhead profiling and event recording.
- JITWatch - Visualize HotSpot JIT compilation decisions.
- GC Easy - GC log analysis tool, useful for tuning bidder JVMs.
- Aleksey Shipilëv's Talks - Definitive content on JVM performance and concurrency.
- Brendan Gregg's Performance Tools - Linux performance toolkit reference, applicable to any high-QPS service.
- USE Method - Utilization, Saturation, Errors performance methodology.
- Mechanical Sympathy Blog - Martin Thompson's posts on low-latency JVM design.
- Disruptor Pattern - High-throughput inter-thread messaging library, used in some bidders.
- OpenTelemetry - Vendor-neutral standard for traces, metrics, and logs.
- Prometheus - Time-series database and metrics format, near-universal in modern bidders.
- Grafana - Dashboarding layer over Prometheus and other data sources.
- Jaeger - Distributed tracing system, originally from Uber.
- Zipkin - Twitter-originated distributed tracing system.
- VictoriaMetrics - Prometheus-compatible TSDB optimized for high cardinality.
- Loki - Log aggregation system, Grafana-native.
- eBPF.io - Reference for eBPF-based observability tooling.
- iPinYou RTB Dataset - Public dataset of real bid logs, widely used in academic CTR/RTB papers.
- Criteo Display Advertising Challenge - Public CTR prediction dataset on Kaggle.
- Criteo 1TB Click Logs - 1TB dataset of display ad click logs.
- Avazu CTR Prediction - Mobile ad CTR dataset, smaller than Criteo's.
- Outbrain Click Prediction - Native ad recommendation dataset.
- TenRec - Tencent recommendation dataset, useful for ML benchmarking.
- arXiv cs.IR - Information retrieval section of arXiv, where most CTR / bidding papers appear.
- KDD Cup Archives - Historic competition datasets, several AdTech-relevant.
- AdExchanger - The trade publication of record for programmatic advertising.
- Digiday - Broader media plus AdTech coverage with strong investigative pieces.
- AdAge - Long-running advertising trade publication with AdTech beat.
- AdWeek - Broad advertising industry news with regular AdTech coverage.
- Campaign - UK-rooted publication with strong European AdTech coverage.
- The Drum - European marketing and AdTech news.
- PPC Land - Daily AdTech news with strong policy and regulation coverage.
- Marketing Brew - Morning Brew's marketing newsletter and site.
- ExchangeWire - European AdTech industry news.
- Marketing Land - MarTech.org, broader marketing technology coverage.
- Mobile Dev Memo - Eric Seufert's site and podcast on mobile growth and ad markets.
- Ad Ops Insider - Ben Kneen's blog with operational tutorials and primers.
- Marketecture - Ari Paparo's podcast and newsletter, very engineer-friendly.
- Beeler.Tech - Rob Beeler's newsletter and consultant network for ad operations.
- The Rebooting - Brian Morrissey's newsletter on the business of media and programmatic.
- Quo Vadis (Tom Triscari) - Long-form essays on programmatic economics.
- Mobile Dev Memo Newsletter - Eric Seufert's weekly newsletter on mobile growth.
- Heavybit AdTech Letter - Sporadic but high-quality AdTech operator content.
- Garbage Day - Internet culture newsletter; surprisingly good on advertising's social impact.
- Platformer - Platform policy newsletter relevant to ad regulation.
- Marketecture Podcast - Weekly interviews with AdTech operators.
- Mobile Dev Memo Podcast - Mobile attribution, gaming, growth marketing.
- The AdTech Podcast - General-interest AdTech interview show.
- Programmatic Mob - DSP-focused operator interviews.
- Two Brews and a Bid - AdTech / programmatic chat with industry guests.
- Acquired - Not AdTech-only, but has excellent deep-dives on Google, Meta, TTD, AppLovin.
- The Recode Decode (archive) - Historical episodes with key AdTech founders.
- Hot Pod - Podcast industry newsletter, relevant for audio advertising.
- Programmatic I/O - Digiday's flagship programmatic event in NYC and Las Vegas.
- AdMonsters Publisher Forum - Invite-only ops-focused conference series.
- dmexco - Largest European digital marketing event, held annually in Cologne.
- IAB Annual Leadership Meeting (ALM) - The annual standards and policy gathering.
- IAB Tech Lab Summit - Engineering-side IAB event focused on standards work.
- Cannes Lions - The main brand-side global event with growing AdTech presence.
- AppsFlyer MAMA - Mobile-attribution-focused conference series.
- AdExchanger Industry Preview - AdExchanger's annual industry kickoff event.
- Digiday Publishing Summit - Publisher-focused complement to Programmatic I/O.
- Cynopsis Measurement Conference - Measurement-focused industry event.
- r/adops - Reddit community for ad operations and AdTech engineers.
- r/programmatic - More buyer/trader-leaning subreddit.
- AdMonsters Slack - Invite-only Slack for AdMonsters members.
- Beeler.Tech Network - Independent AdTech consultant network.
- Prebid Slack - Open Slack workspace for Prebid contributors and users.
- IAB Tech Lab Working Groups - Specification working groups; engineers can join.
- LinkedIn AdTech Engineers Group - Several active LinkedIn groups, search "AdTech".
- The Trade Desk Edge Academy - Free training and certification, useful even outside TTD.
- The AdTech Book (ClearCode) - Free online book; the single best plain-English overview of how AdTech works.
- Targeted by Mike Smith - History of how programmatic conquered display advertising.
- Ad Serving Technology by Gregory Cristal - Technical reference covering ad servers, exchanges, and DSPs.
- Subprime Attention Crisis by Tim Hwang - Critical examination of programmatic advertising as a financial market.
- The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu - History of attention-based business models.
- Confessions of the Pricing Man by Hermann Simon - Not AdTech-specific but essential for anyone working on auction or pricing logic.
- Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann - Mandatory reading for any backend engineer working on ad infrastructure.
- The Almanack of Naval Ravikant - Tangential, but useful framing for engineers thinking about specialization and leverage.
- AdMonsters Job Board - AdTech-specific job listings, US-leaning.
- Beeler.Tech Job Board - Curated AdTech operator and engineering roles.
- LinkedIn AdTech Filter - Use "OpenRTB" or "DSP" as search terms.
- Digiday Worklife - Career-focused content for AdTech professionals.
- Levels.fyi AdTech Companies - Compensation transparency for many AdTech employers.
Pull requests welcome. To suggest a resource:
- Open an issue describing the resource and which category it belongs in.
- Make sure the link is stable — no marketing landing pages, no link rot, no paywalls without preview.
- Keep descriptions to one factual sentence — no superlatives, no opinion.
- Submit a PR. Items in each category are alphabetized where practical.
Maintained by Charles — AdTech Engineering Lead specializing in OpenRTB-based DSPs, JVM bidder tuning, and high-QPS auction systems. Connect on LinkedIn or book a call.
To the extent possible under law, the maintainer has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.