Advertising Isn’t Always Glamorous: The IAB’s New Rules
April 3, 2008
That latent parent, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, announced the release of a set of Digital Video Ad Format Guidelines. These guidelines apply to current in-stream ad products, including linear video ads, non-linear video ads and companion ads. The IAB was looking to simplifying ad buying across multiple site and achieving some sort of efficient submission guidelines. These new rules take the place of those set up in 2005.
Do you even know who is one this board? Who gets to issue edicts out like this? The executive board is made up of folks from Martha Stewart Living, IAB, The New York Times, 24/7 Media, AOL, Forbes, Walt Disney, CNET and Microsoft. Shouldn’t there be at least, you know, one big on just to represent? You can get the full list of directors, here.
You can also download the entire guidelines PDF here, which includes the board establishing a name for “TV-like “video ad” units in the marketplace.” From here on out, these “TV-like” units will now be called “broadband video commercial.” You just know it took them three lunch meetings to iron that one out. Here’s another gem:
“Broadband Video Commercials” may appear before, during, and after a variety of content including, but not limited to,
streaming video, animation, gaming, and music video content in a player environment. This definition includes Broadband
Video Commercials that appear in live, archived, and downloadable streaming content.”
OMG. It’s Wednesday. We’re halfway to the end. Shouldn’t it be more exciting than this?
April 3, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Take a deep breath…..it’s Thursday.
At least they didn’t get the FCC involved. But don’t worry, it’ll happen.
April 4, 2008 at 3:20 am
I was on the board that helped flesh these out (Deep Focus is NOT an IAB member, BTW). I’d be more than happy to provide some insight…
It took so many meetings to get this figured out, you have no idea. But I gotta tell you, the end result is going to help. Big time. The online video biz NEEDED some minimum guidelines/standards. This sets those minimums. The best stuff will happen when agencies and publishers ignore these minimums and get crazy with the cheez whiz.