Vistar is transitioning to Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) content categories. During this period, you can select from both Vistar creative categories and IAB content categories. Vistar categories appear with an asterisk and will be mapped to an IAB category and eventually deprecated.
Because of this mapping, setting a restriction on either a Vistar category or its mapped IAB category restricts both. For example, if you restrict the Vistar category Cannabis, the mapped IAB category Health & Fitness | Alternative Medicine is also restricted. The same applies in reverse. Also, restricting a parent IAB category automatically restricts all child categories beneath it.
Below is the current mapping of Vistar to IAB categories:
Vistar and IAB categories
The following list displays the full breakdown of Vistar and IAB content categories with their corresponding codes.
If coordinating with a 3P DSP about a creative category, Vistar recommends referring to the IAB content category rather than the category listed in the ad platform. Please refer to Creative Categories Restrictions for 3P DSPs for more details.
Note: In the restrictions view, users can select both Vistar* and IAB categories for their venues/networks. All Vistar categories will be displayed with an asterisk as they will be mapped to an IAB category and eventually deprecated.