Universal features of holographic anomalies

We study the mechanism by which gravitational actions reproduce the trace anomalies of the holographically related conformal field theories. Two universal features emerge: a) the ratios of type B trace anomalies in any even dimension are independent of the gravitational action being uniquely determined by the underlying algebraic structure b) the normalization of the type A and the overall normalization of the type B anomalies are given by action dependent expressions with the dimension dependence completely fixed.