NEW YORK, New York (GROUNDREPORT) — Calling the move "historic," the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced today new standardized guidelines for advertisements on digital video content. To the web industry, the announcement heralds a turning point for the exploding digital video format, and an acceptance by web publishers and advertisers that the new ecosystem demands new standards.
In its press release, IAB president and CEO Randall Rothenberg acknowledges that "consumers have been swift to embrace the digital video experience online." Speaking today at the IAB Leadership Forum on Digital Video in New York City, Rothenberg asserted that the issuance of the digital video ad format standards was akin to the first release of standardized banner ad guidelines. He also acknowledged the hard work of the guidelines steering committee, which included Google, Yahoo! Inc and Time Warner, companies that are usually busy "battling each other in the marketplace."
Speakers at the forum today including the charismatic Quincy Smith, President of CBS Interactive, who urged his audience to "talk about ads as content." He also noted that over the last nine months, a sea change had occurred as "media has taken more time, effort and money to understand technology than technology has taken to understand media."
Later moderator Dina Kaplan, COO of Blip.tv, challenged panelists from Yahoo!, Google and traditional marketers to consider newer metrics of measurement, like "Twitter mentions."
IAB-Video-Ad-Format-Standards – Get more documents
To download "Digital Video In-Stream Ad Format Guidelines," the 17-page PDF of the new guidelines, click here.