Ad tech moves fast — specs change, vendors update, new standards emerge. Here's how to keep your ad tech knowledge base organised and searchable in Recallio.
Ad tech is one of the most documentation-heavy fields in tech. Programmatic advertising involves IAB standards, Google Ad Manager specs, header bidding documentation, consent management frameworks, auction mechanics guides, and a constant stream of industry updates. Staying on top of it requires a system.
Here's how to use Recallio to manage ad tech research, documentation, and vendor tracking.
RecallioAd Tech
└── Standards & Specs
└── Vendor Docs
└── Auction & Bidding
└── Consent & Privacy
└── Testing & QA
└── Industry News
Standards & Specs: IAB specs (OpenRTB, VAST, VPAID, TCF), W3C standards relevant to advertising, browser privacy proposals. These are stable reference material returned to repeatedly.
Vendor Docs: Documentation for your specific vendor stack — Google Ad Manager, Prebid.js, your SSPs and DSPs, viewability vendors. Include both the official docs and any community resources (Prebid forums, Reddit threads that solved specific problems).
Auction & Bidding: Header bidding configuration guides, auction mechanics explainers, price floor strategies, timeout optimisation. The kind of content you reference when debugging auction behaviour.
Consent & Privacy: TCF 2.x documentation, CMPs you've integrated (Didomi, Sourcepoint, etc.), privacy regulation overviews (GDPR, CCPA, ePrivacy). Compliance is an ongoing area — save everything here.
Testing & QA: Ad verification tools, QA checklists, testing environments, viewability measurement guides. Things you open repeatedly while testing campaigns.
Industry News: Trade press (Digiday, The Trade Desk blog, AdExchanger) for tracking market trends. Tag items here with to-read and clear them weekly.
| Tag | Use |
|---|---|
spec | Official standards and specifications |
vendor | Vendor-specific documentation |
prebid | Prebid-specific content |
gam | Google Ad Manager |
consent | Consent and privacy framework content |
qa | QA processes and tools |
breaking | Industry changes that need attention soon |
resolved | A problem you found a fix for |
backlog | Relevant but not urgent |
Vendor docs are often spread across multiple pages. When saving a specific doc page, use the description to record the context:
"GAM: Setting floor prices for open auction. This is the current (2026) API path — supersedes the older UI flow documented elsewhere."
That "supersedes" context matters in ad tech more than most fields — documentation gets outdated as platforms evolve, and old bookmarks can lead you in the wrong direction.
Standards like OpenRTB and TCF go through versions. When saving a spec, include the version explicitly in the description:
"OpenRTB 2.6 — key changes from 2.5: plcmt field replaces pos for CTV, new skadn fields for mobile attribution."
When a new version drops, save the new spec and archive (don't delete) the old one. You often need the old spec to understand backwards compatibility requirements.
The CMP landscape is complex. If you've evaluated CMPs or worked with specific vendors (Didomi, Sourcepoint, OneTrust), create vendor-specific collections or tags:
Consent & Privacy
└── Didomi
└── Sourcepoint
└── TCF Spec
└── Regulation Overviews
Save implementation guides, specific configuration notes, and any vendor support responses that resolved issues. Support tickets often contain the most specific, useful information — a resolved ticket saved as a bookmark with a good description is a better reference than re-opening a ticket.
Smart Collections filter by a single tag, so pick one tag to mean "needs attention" — flagged, for example — and apply it to anything urgent, whether it's a spec change, an industry news story with implications, or a vendor announcement you need to act on. Create a Smart Collection filtered by tag flagged and review it weekly.
Ad tech has high turnover and complex onboarding. A Recallio knowledge base built over 1–2 years becomes a genuine asset — both for your own work and for onboarding new team members. Sharing a public collection of well-curated ad tech resources is often more useful than any internal wiki built from scratch.
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