IAB's new QA guidelines instructive for DOOH sector

June 29, 2010 by Dave Haynes

For those of us who were involved in online media when it first started taking shape, the work of the Interactive Advertising Bureau is always interesting.

While online is so much bigger than DOOH, there are definite parallels between the two mediums. Both have seen countless crazy ideas come and go. And both have gone through a whole bunch of Wild West years.

The IAB many years ago was formed to start developing and then enforcing standards on an online industry that had few, something organizations like POPAI are now trying to do for digital signage. And now the IAB has released a set of quality assurance guidelines intended to get the countless online media entities out there to live by some rules.

Committee objectives are to foster the highest standards of professionalism and accountability in relationships with publishers, advertisers and the agency community, to develop programs that enable revenue growth, and to create best practices that protect consumers and the industry, says the report’s introduction, of the committee that did all the heavy lifting.

It’s a pretty deep piece of work, and contains all kinds of stuff that’s all but foreign to people who don’t buy and sell time on the web. But there is a lot of material that’s interesting, particularly for those cursed souls who enjoy things like being on standards committees.

Not I, if that wasn’t already clear.

Anyway, the document deals with things like acquiring inventory and taxonomy (in plain language, classification) that would be instructive to people looking at the same issues for DOOH.

What struck me was the last bit in the executive summary:

Networks & Exchanges that voluntarily agree to be certified against these guidelines are providing marketers & agencies with a standardized approach that is designed to make buying easier and to give increased control over where ads are placed.

Sound familiar?