New Guidance Helps Buyers and Sellers Streamline Live Event Advertising Through Consistent API Implementation; Available for Public Comment Until Monday November 23, 2026

NEW YORK, Oct. 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Today, IAB Tech Lab, the global digital advertising technical standard-setting body, announced the release of the Live Event Ad Playbook (LEAP) Implementation Guide for public comment. The new guidance provides a common framework for implementing the LEAP Forecasting API and Concurrent Streams API, helping publishers, advertisers, and technology partners better plan for live events and respond to changes in viewership as they happen. The guidance is available for public comment until Monday, November 23, 2026.

“Live sports and other major events are becoming a bigger part of streaming, and the industry needs the infrastructure to keep up,” said Shailley Singh, EVP, Product, and COO, IAB Tech Lab. “We have made real progress with LEAP, and this guide is about making that progress practical. When buyers and sellers can work from the same technical playbook, they can spend less time figuring out integrations and more time creating better advertising experiences for viewers.”

The LEAP Implementation Guide builds on IAB Tech Lab’s broader effort to establish a consistent technical foundation for live event advertising. As audiences increasingly turn to streaming for sports, entertainment, and other major cultural moments, the ability to anticipate demand and adjust to rapid changes in viewership has become critical. Live events bring unique operational challenges, with audiences that can grow dramatically in minutes and advertising opportunities that require coordination across multiple platforms and partners.

The guidance addresses these challenges by outlining common implementation practices for two core LEAP APIs. The Forecasting API helps buyers and sellers exchange information about upcoming events, expected audiences, available inventory, and campaign opportunities before an event begins. The Concurrent Streams API provides near-real-time viewership signals that can inform infrastructure scaling, campaign pacing, and bidding decisions while an event is underway.

Together, these APIs support a more connected approach to live event advertising, from early planning through real-time execution. The guide covers authentication, request and response handling, identifiers, polling, error handling, rate limits, and operational considerations. By establishing consistent implementation practices, it aims to reduce integration complexity, improve interoperability, and make it easier for companies to adopt LEAP across different business relationships and technical environments.

“Live events are some of the most valuable moments in streaming, and the industry has an opportunity to make the technology behind them work a lot harder,” said Rob Hazan, General Manager, Product Management, The Trade Desk. “We’ve been strong supporters of LEAP because common standards help everyone move faster. Giving buyers and sellers clearer guidance on how to implement these APIs is an important step toward making live event advertising more predictable, efficient, and scalable.”

The guide was developed through IAB Tech Lab’s Live Events Ad Playbook Subgroup, bringing together industry participants to address the technical and operational challenges of advertising during high-demand live programming. The work reflects a broader industry effort to improve coordination between publishers, supply-side platforms, demand-side platforms, and other partners as live streaming continues to grow.

“Running ads during major live sporting events, where millions of viewers arrive at once, shows how quickly small inconsistencies in API implementation become real coordination problems,” said Pramod Jagtap, Principal Engineer, Amazon Ads. “The LEAP Implementation Guide gives engineering and operations teams a shared, practical reference for these APIs, which shortens integrations and lets partners line up quickly when timing matters most.”

“The biggest moments in live streaming are also when the supply chain is under the most strain,” said James Wilhite, VP of Product at Index Exchange. “When millions of viewers reach the same ad break within seconds, the infrastructure needs to be ready to handle those sudden surges in demand. LEAP enables the industry to plan around shared forecasts and respond to real-time signals, helping the entire ecosystem scale together. We’re proud to have helped shape this implementation guide.”

The LEAP initiative continues to advance through additional phases focused on improving the programmatic advertising experience for live events. IAB Tech Lab is encouraging industry participants to contribute to the next stages of the initiative, including Phase Three, focused on implementation guidance, Phase Four, focused on creative readiness and continued development of versions 1.1 of the Forecasting and Concurrent Streams APIs. Future work will also address standardized ad pre-fetching to support more consistent execution across live streaming environments.

Industry participants are encouraged to review the guidance and submit feedback by Monday, November 23, 2026. The LEAP Implementation Guide is available for review at https://iabtechlab.com/leapimplementation

About IAB Technology Laboratory
Established in 2014, the IAB Technology Laboratory (Tech Lab) is a non-profit consortium that engages a member community globally to develop foundational technology and standards that enable growth and trust in the digital media ecosystem. Comprised of digital publishers, ad technology firms, agencies, brands, and other member companies, IAB Tech Lab focuses on solutions for brand safety and ad fraud; identity, data, and consumer privacy; cross-channel programmatic effectiveness and ad measurement; and the impact of LLMs and AI agents on advertising. Its work includes the OpenRTB real-time bidding protocol, ads.txt anti-fraud specification, Open Measurement SDK for viewability and verification, VAST video specification, Trusted Server, and the Agentic Roadmap initiative for agentic advertising. Board members and companies are listed at https://iabtechlab.com/about-the-iab-tech-lab/tech-lab-leadership/. For more information, please visit https://iabtechlab.com.

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SOURCE IAB Tech Lab