IAB proposes new standards to end fragmentation in CTV advertising signals

The immediate implication is a shift toward value-based pricing, where publishers must defend CPMs through granular signals rather than broad 'premium CTV' tags. This move addresses the ecosystem-wide fragmentation where a single sports broadcast might be misclassified as it moves between living rooms, smartphones, and public bars. For the technical stack, these standards provide the necessary guardrails for the 96% of media buyers planning to use agentic AI for programmatic execution by 2026. Success now hinges on whether DSPs and SSPs adopt these signals more consistently than they did with the 2023 video.plcmt specifications. Watch for the final version release in Q4 2026.

The push for standardized video signals arrives as digital video spend continues to outpace traditional media. Per IAB and Advertiser Perceptions (April 2025), digital video ad spend reached $64 billion in 2024 and is projected to hit $72 billion by 2025, accounting for nearly 60% of all U.S. video advertising. This growth is increasingly driven by programmatic tools, with CTV now commanding 75% of its inventory via automated channels. The RMT standard is a critical technical component of the broader Project Eidos initiative, which IAB CEO David Cohen unveiled in February 2026 to harmonize measurement across fragmented streaming and social environments.

Project Eidos specifically targets the rise of AI in programmatic advertising. According to the IAB State of Data 2026 report, approximately 70% of demand-side executives expect to scale AI technology in their audience-measurement systems by 2028. However, 36% of buyers demand full transparency in how these agents make decisions. By standardizing signals through the OpenRTB protocol, the IAB aims to prevent AI buyers from misinterpreting public ambient displays as high-attention living room inventory, a move supported by early Project Eidos participants including The Trade Desk, Paramount, and Publicis Media.

Operational adoption remains the industry's primary hurdle. While the Tech Lab updated video.plcmt definitions in 2023 to separate true in-stream from 'accompanying content,' multiple DSPs were still relying on legacy signaling fields as late as 2025 (per AdExchanger). The RMT standard attempts to avoid this by moving away from binary definitions toward a multi-layered taxonomy of real-time context. This shift is particularly relevant in markets like Latin America, where 60% of digital users now consume content via connected TVs, according to Comscore (July 2026).