AppNexus website screenshot

AppNexus

AppNexus was a New York-based programmatic advertising technology company that ran one of the largest independent real-time online ad exchanges alongside a cloud-based buy-side and sell-side platform for advertisers, agencies, and publishers. AT&T acquired AppNexus in 2018 and rebranded it Xandr; Microsoft acquired Xandr in 2022 and productized it as Microsoft Monetize (sell-side) and Microsoft Invest (buy-side). Its developer surface lives on as the Digital Platform API (host api.appnexus.com) - a RESTful JSON API of roughly 150 services covering advertisers, insertion orders, line items, campaigns, creatives, publishers, sites, placements, deals and reporting - plus the actively released AppNexus mobile advertising SDKs for Android and iOS. Microsoft is discontinuing the Invest DSP effective 28 February 2026; the Monetize sell-side platform and the API remain live, documented on Microsoft Learn. No OpenAPI, MCP server or agent card is published, and API access is restricted to contracted customers. This profile was enriched by the API Evangelist pipeline from the public developer documentation.

AppNexus publishes 1 API on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, Adtech, Advertising, Programmatic, and Ad Exchange.

AppNexus’ developer surface includes documentation, API reference, getting-started guide, authentication, changelog, support, and 24 more developer resources.

37.6/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 16/100 agent aware Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-08-17 · rubric v0.11.0
1 APIs
CompanyAdtechAdvertisingProgrammaticAd ExchangeDSPSSPMobile SDKMarketing

Kin Score

Kin Score Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-08-17 · rubric v0.11.0
Composite quality — 37.6/100 · thin
Contract Quality 0.0 / 25
Developer Ergonomics 13.0 / 20
Commercial Clarity 4.2 / 20
Operational Transparency 11.3 / 13
Governance 1.5 / 12
Discoverability 7.6 / 10
Agent readiness — 16/100 · agent aware
Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18
Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10
MCP Server 0 / 12
Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10
Idempotency 0 / 9
Stable Error Semantics 8 / 8
Request/Response Examples 0 / 7
Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7
Typed Event Surface 0 / 6
Agent Skills 0 / 5
Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4
Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3
A2A Agent Card 0 / 8
Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4
Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/appnexus: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Want it done for you? Prioritized profiling — $2,500 →

APIs 1

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Digital Platform API

RESTful JSON API for the AppNexus/Xandr programmatic advertising platform - manage advertisers, campaigns, line items, creatives, placements, inventory, deals, and pull reportin...

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Appnexus Rate Limits

4 limits

RATE LIMITS

Security Posture 3

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Appnexus Authentication

token · 2 schemes

SECURITY

Appnexus Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Resources

Get Started 3

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

Documentation 2

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

Design & Contract 6

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Build 5

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

Access & Security 5

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

Operate 6

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Commercial 1

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Company 1

The organization behind the API

Source (apis.yml)

apis.yml Raw ↑
aid: appnexus
name: AppNexus
description: AppNexus was a New York-based programmatic advertising technology company that ran one of the largest independent
  real-time online ad exchanges alongside a cloud-based buy-side and sell-side platform for advertisers, agencies, and publishers.
  AT&T acquired AppNexus in 2018 and rebranded it Xandr; Microsoft acquired Xandr in 2022 and productized it as Microsoft
  Monetize (sell-side) and Microsoft Invest (buy-side). Its developer surface lives on as the Digital Platform API (host api.appnexus.com)
  - a RESTful JSON API of roughly 150 services covering advertisers, insertion orders, line items, campaigns, creatives, publishers,
  sites, placements, deals and reporting - plus the actively released AppNexus mobile advertising SDKs for Android and iOS.
  Microsoft is discontinuing the Invest DSP effective 28 February 2026; the Monetize sell-side platform and the API remain
  live, documented on Microsoft Learn. No OpenAPI, MCP server or agent card is published, and API access is restricted to
  contracted customers. This profile was enriched by the API Evangelist pipeline from the public developer documentation.
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source:
  - authentication
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/appnexus/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/appnexus/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- first-round-capital
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: portfolio-lead
x-successor: xandr
specificationVersion: '0.20'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-08-12'
tags:
- Company
- Adtech
- Advertising
- Programmatic
- Ad Exchange
- DSP
- SSP
- Mobile SDK
- Marketing
apis:
- name: Digital Platform API
  description: RESTful JSON API for the AppNexus/Xandr programmatic advertising platform - manage advertisers, campaigns,
    line items, creatives, placements, inventory, deals, and pull reporting. Token authentication, offset pagination (start_element/num_elements),
    and a response/error envelope.
  humanURL: https://learn.microsoft.com/xandr/digital-platform-api/
  baseURL: https://api.appnexus.com
  tags:
  - Advertising
  - Programmatic
  - Adtech
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://learn.microsoft.com/xandr/digital-platform-api/
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xandr/digital-platform-api/reference
  - type: Authentication
    url: authentication/appnexus-authentication.yml
  - type: Conventions
    url: conventions/appnexus-conventions.yml
  - type: RateLimits
    url: rate-limits/appnexus-rate-limits.yml
  - type: DataModel
    url: data-model/appnexus-data-model.yml
  - type: ErrorCatalog
    url: errors/appnexus-error-codes.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://www.appnexus.com
- type: DeveloperPortal
  url: https://learn.microsoft.com/xandr/digital-platform-api/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://learn.microsoft.com/xandr/digital-platform-api/
- type: APIReference
  url: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xandr/digital-platform-api/reference
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://learn.microsoft.com/xandr/digital-platform-api/api-onboarding-process
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/appnexus
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/appnexus-authentication.yml
- type: Conventions
  url: conventions/appnexus-conventions.yml
- type: ErrorCatalog
  url: errors/appnexus-error-codes.yml
- type: Lifecycle
  url: lifecycle/appnexus-lifecycle.yml
- type: Deprecation
  url: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xandr/digital-platform-api/breaking-changes
- type: StatusPage
  name: Xandr Status
  url: https://status.xandr.com
- type: ChangeLog
  name: Microsoft Monetize release notes
  url: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xandr/monetize/release-notes
- type: ChangeLog
  name: Changelog surfaces (artifact)
  url: changelog/appnexus-changelog.yml
- type: Support
  name: Xandr Customer Support Portal
  url: https://help.xandr.com
- type: Login
  name: Microsoft Monetize console
  url: https://monetize.xandr.com/login
- type: Packages
  url: packages/appnexus-packages.yml
- type: SDKs
  name: anx-api (Digital Platform API JavaScript client)
  url: packages/appnexus-packages.yml
- type: SDKs
  name: AppNexus Android Mobile SDK
  url: packages/appnexus-packages.yml
- type: SDKs
  name: AppNexus iOS Mobile SDK
  url: packages/appnexus-packages.yml
- type: Components
  url: components/appnexus-components.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/appnexus-rate-limits.yml
- type: Plans
  url: plans/appnexus-plans-pricing.yml
- type: DataModel
  url: data-model/appnexus-data-model.yml
- type: Conformance
  url: conformance/appnexus-conformance.yml
- type: Compliance
  name: Industry standards bodies Xandr states membership in (IAB Tech Lab, NAI, TAG, Prebid.org, W3C)
  url: conformance/appnexus-conformance.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/appnexus-domain-security.yml
- type: VulnerabilityDisclosure
  url: security/appnexus-vulnerability-disclosure.yml
- type: Security
  name: Microsoft Security Response Center (parent-company disclosure channel for Xandr)
  url: security/appnexus-vulnerability-disclosure.yml
- type: LLMsTxt
  url: llms/appnexus-llms.txt
x-pointer-notes:
  withdrawn:
  - type: Sandbox
    reason: Withdrawn 2026-08-12. api-test.appnexus.com appears only inside a curl -v trace in the docs and 404s when probed;
      Xandr publishes no sandbox, test mode or test credentials. See sandbox/appnexus-sandbox.yml.
  not_emitted:
  - type: WellKnown
    reason: Every /.well-known path 404s on api.appnexus.com. www.appnexus.com and www.xandr.com 301 to about.ads.microsoft.com,
      whose SPA answers 200 with an HTML shell for every path - a soft-404, not a document. See well-known/appnexus-well-known.yml.
  - type: AgentCard
    reason: no agent-card.json or agent.json on any host; search-only artifact, nothing written.
  - type: CLI
    reason: anx-cli exists on npm but its only release is 0.1.10 from 2016-03-31 and the current documentation never mentions
      a CLI. Artifact kept at cli/appnexus-cli.yml as an abandonment record; no pointer emitted. See cli/appnexus-cli.yml.
  - type: Idempotency
    reason: no Idempotency-Key contract is documented anywhere in the Digital Platform API.
  - type:
    - OpenAPI
    - AsyncAPI
    - Webhooks
    - MCPServer
    - AgentSkill
    - OAuthScopes
    - Overlay
    - Protobuf
    reason: No machine-readable contract of any kind is published, and there is no event/webhook surface, MCP server or OAuth
      scope model to describe. Skills and overlays have no spec to ground them in.
  - type:
    - Pricing
    - TermsOfService
    - PrivacyPolicy
    reason: Explicitly not public - "The Xandr Service Policies, Privacy Regulations, Platform Terms of Service and Online
      Terms are confidential and tied to specific contracts between Xandr and its customers." See plans/appnexus-plans-pricing.yml.
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-08-12'
  status: enriched
  artifacts_added: 8
  pass: local-v1