The industry in Singapore is looking into the
formation of a local chapter of the Internet
Advertising Bureau (IAB) to advance the Internet as a valuable channel
for advertising in South East Asia.
IAB Singapore is applying to be a society here this month. When that is
approved, it will
then apply to be an official IAB chapter.
The entire process will take approximately four months. There are 16
founding companies.
They are Brand Dialogue,
Technowledge Asia Pte Ltd, CyberSoft
Pte Ltd, Human Interactive
Technologies (HIT), The Connection, TCS MediaCity, SingNet Pte Ltd, Expanded Media Asia Pte Ltd, Tricast Pte Ltd, Macromedia Inc, EastWest Public
Relations Pte Ltd, Altavista
Skali, Active Media Pte
Ltd, Publicis Technology, Yahoo,
and The Edge Consultants.
Official discussions of the formation of IAB Singapore were held four
months ago.
While a publishing and content development consultant at Sembawang Media,
Schoppert organized a
seminar and brought together media planners and Internet service providers
(ISPs) at the end of 1996 to discuss the future of online advertising in
Singapore.
“That leads into the formation of the Internet Advertising Bureau
Singapore,” Schoppert said.
He said that the media profession has often discussed the idea of educating
the advertising community in Singapore and creating industry standards for
online advertising.
“The industry on the whole has not always adopted the best practices —
both the publishers and the advertisers.”
There is a learning curve for everybody. As advertisers learn how to use
the tools as they invest in the tools to measure CPM (cost per thousand), a
base of knowledge and expertise will gradually build up, he said.
“The power of the CPM model for online advertisement is part of the
reason why it is such an interesting proposition right now. The potential
is way more powerful than print and TV. The industry is still running to
fulfill that potential.”