Mumbai: IAB Tech Lab, the global digital advertising technical standard-setting body, has announced the release of the Event and Conversion API (ECAPI), a new technical specification aimed at standardising how marketing-related events and measurable outcomes are shared between advertisers, advertising platforms, and partners. The specification has been opened for public comment until Friday, February 20, 2026, inviting industry-wide feedback to support adoption and refinement.
Designed to reduce complexity and improve interoperability across the digital advertising ecosystem, ECAPI provides a common framework for communicating full-funnel events—from upper-funnel engagement to lower-funnel conversions—in a consistent and scalable format. By enabling advertisers to send standardised event data to platforms, partners, and AI-driven systems, ECAPI seeks to improve campaign optimisation, measurement, and outcome-based decision-making.
“ECAPI is about reducing friction and creating a shared foundation the industry can actually build on,” said Anthony Katsur, CEO, IAB Tech Lab. “Advertisers and platforms are already doing this work in parallel today. This specification brings consistency to how full-funnel events are defined and shared, so teams can spend less time managing integrations and more time focusing on measurable results and testing agentic optimization of outcomes. We want the industry to pressure test it, challenge it, and help us make it stronger during the public comment period.”
Currently, many advertising platforms rely on their own proprietary Conversion APIs. While effective in isolation, these systems often require advertisers to undertake extensive custom development when working with multiple partners, increasing cost and operational complexity. As outcome-based and agentic buying models gain traction, this fragmentation becomes harder to scale.
ECAPI addresses these challenges by offering a flexible yet standardised framework that reduces implementation effort while supporting diverse use cases. The specification is built to evolve with industry needs, enabling specialisation without the need for entirely new integrations. It will also form a core part of the IAB Tech Lab’s agentic roadmap, supporting outcomes-based buying and selling powered by measurable goals and AI agents.
“Open standards for Conversion API support innovation and interoperability across the digital advertising ecosystem. Working with industry to provide a consistent framework to understand marketing outcomes helps marketers gain deeper insights and enhance campaign effectiveness, while supporting privacy and transparency for people,” said Steven Ware Jones, Business Engineer, Meta.
“ECAPI creates a shared language that can reduce integration overhead while still supporting innovation,” said Barbara Kalicki, Associate Director, Publicis Sapient. “It allows retailers and platforms to focus on improving the value of the data being exchanged rather than rebuilding similar solutions again and again.”
With ECAPI, IAB Tech Lab aims to advance a more efficient, interoperable, and performance-driven digital advertising infrastructure. Industry stakeholders can participate in the public comment process until February 20, 2026, via the IAB Tech Lab website.
