The Trusted Server is an open-source framework by IAB Tech Lab, designed to facilitate digital publishers by transferring ad-related capabilities from the browser environment to the server side, i.e. publishers’ domain context.
What Is the Trusted Server?
In brief, the Trusted Server is the IAB Tech Lab initiative, aimed at providing publishers with more control over monetization-related processes, like identity management, auction setup and ad campaign measurement by moving their execution server-side, hence minimizing their dependency on browser API, third-party signals, etc.
Key Features & Benefits
According to the IAB Tech Lab, the development of the Trusted Server was primarily fueled by the growing uncertainties around the continued changes, in terms of how third-party signals are being passed on the client/browser side, due to altering privacy regulations and other factors, as well as the lack of publishers’ control over their first-party data.
In this respect, the newly-introduced Trusted Server framework, which implies the execution of the core processes, including data signal collection, ad request/response management, SSA stitching, Prebid server integration & auction execution, etc., server-side, should help increase the overall data security, lower ad blocking risks, and, certainly, provide publishers with more control over their monetization-related operations, hence helping improve their overall efficiency.
More importantly, the suggested roadmap for the Trusted Server future improvements also implies a broad support of third-party plugins, helping to handle ad fraud prevention, brand safety & brand suitability, advanced ad verification, and much more. As expected, this so to speak “plug & play” approach should enable enhancing the Trusted Server functional capabilities with minimum disruptions to existing programmatic advertising ecosystem.
Perspectives of Adoption
As of the beginning of Q2 2025, the IAB Tech Lab Trusted Server framework is only available as a Proof of Concept, which aims to introduce the core idea behind the initiative, as well as its core functionality to major digital ad industry players.
As for its MVP, which is expected to include a set of required deployments on a publisher side, its development is still ongoing, but no exact timeline on its release has been announced yet. In view of this, the perspectives of the Trusted Server adoption in 2025 and 2026 are still vague.