IAB Proposes Broadband Video Ad Guidelines

The guidelines proposed today only apply to broadband video commercials, defined “as a commercial that may appear before, during, and after a variety of content including streaming video, animation, gaming, and music video content in a player environment.” IAB CEO Greg Staurt told ClickZ: “The only thing that’s unusual about the video guidelines is that we haven’t normally dealt with categories that are that small, but given the importance of this to the future, its importance to the members, we decided to work on it now.” He said the guidelines eventually will be extended to mobile, iTV and other platforms.

The major mandate would be to count impressions only when the ad actually begins to appear on the user’s screen, not when the server is called or the buffer starts. Delivery of a tracking asset is suggested. IAB also suggests:

– that pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll ads be tracked and reported separately.

– that bit-rates be reported separately when possible.

IAB is taking a feedback survey tailored to various categories — publisher, advertisers, etc. Guidelines | Press release |

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