The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), an
industry organization, this week formed a task force aimed at establishing
standards and areas of opportunity for the burgeoning wireless Internet
advertising business.
The IAB intends to get a variety of industry players involved to make
recommendations on standards for creative for wireless platforms, and to
help come up with guidelines for measuring results on wireless advertising
campaigns.
It is important for the development of wireless advertising that some
consensus be reached, to avoid confusion and enable agencies to develop
creative that will work on more than one device and publishing platform.
Such standards, though often controversial, will likely speed the growth of
advertising on wireless devices.
“The availability of the Internet over wireless devices promises to add
significantly to advertisers’ ability to reach their customers as never
before, and it is crucial that as this medium emerges, we lead in the
development of guidelines and identify the opportunities which will grow
the business in an orderly and profitable manner,” said IAB chairman Rich
LeFurgy.
“Wireless is the next plateau for our industry, and the participation of
device manufacturers, service providers, content companies, ad agencies,
resellers and networks will be important to our overall success.”
The guidelines for creative, according to the IAB, must address how ads
should appear on multiple devices — cellular phones, PDAs, and pagers.
Another issue is how they should be displayed on different screen sizes and
on devices with differing capabilities — for color displays, sound, and
graphics.
The organization says measurement guidelines must establish uniform
metrics, defining click-throughs and impressions or creating an entirely
new way to measure effectiveness.
The taskforce is headed by IAB board members Beth-Ann Eason of DoubleClick and Richy Glassberg of Phase2Media. The organization is
trying to round up other industry representatives to serve on the
committee, and is asking interested people to e-mail wireless@iab.net.
