The Protocol Buffers representation for OpenRTB is the proposed standard by IAB Tech Lab, aimed at improving the efficiency of programmatic advertising processes.
The Story Behind & Key Benefits
While the use of language-neutral, platform-agnostic mechanisms of serializing structured data, known as Protocol Buffers, isn’t entirely new in programmatic advertising, until recently there hasn’t been a unified standard for handling translation/conversion of data between JSON and Proto.
Aiming to help digital business reduce operational resources on the technical integrations and internal implementations, IAB Tech Lab has introduced a Protocol Buffers standard representation, which enables streamlining communication between various ad tech stack solutions and improve the overall efficiency of the programmatic ad supply chain.
In plain words, the Protocol Buffers standard provides a unified structure on how encoding of OpenRTB objects should be handled (in a shorter and more efficient binary format), reducing operational overhead and custom implementation issues.
Namely, it is expected that the use of Protocol Buffers can potentially speed up data parsing by up to 40-50%, compared to JSON, allowing to reallocate operational and financial resources to more creative and innovative tasks and projects.
Implementation Perspectives
The Protocol Buffers (or shorter: Protobuf) standard has been available for public comment until the end of October 2025, hence the perspectives of its industry-wide adoption aren’t entirely clear yet.
According to the IAB Tech Lab working group, there are no plans to deprecate or move away from JSON anytime, with its still being considered the default encoding standard for OpenRTB.
However, their recommendation is to implement Protocol Buffers internally, i.e. process the data in the faster and more efficient manner inside the company’s technical infrastructure, then convert it to JSON at the so-called boundary level, while communicating with external clients, APIs, browsers, etc., as needed.