Last week was a busy week at the IAB. Here's a quick recap:

On Monday the IAB held the annual Digital Video Leadership Forum educating marketers, agencies and publishers on one of the hottest topics in the marketplace. Visit our event recap to see what you missed. The IAB released the highly anticipated Digital Video In-Stream Ad Format Guidelines and Digital Video Ad Format Compliance Seal at the event.

Then on Thursday, the IAB announced the Revised Ad Unit and Rich Media Creative Guidelines for Public Comment. Please take a moment to review the proposed guidelines and leave your comments.

On the horizon are the highly anticipated IAB Leadership Forum: User-Generated Content & Social Media, IAB Professional Development training on interactive advertising sales and more!  Please visit the events section of the IAB website for more information.

 

Read More:

IAB Leadership Forum: Digital Video Live Blog

Digital Video Event Recap

Digital Video In-Stream Ad Format Guidelines and Digital Video Ad Format Compliance Seal

Revised Ad Unit and Rich Media Creative Guidelines for Public Comment 

IAB Leadership Forum: User-Generated Content & Social Media

IAB Professional Development Sales Training

Via Beet.TV

5:30pm
The last presentation of the day left a feeling of awe and amazement in the room.  It was about Video on Demand, Addressable Television and the possibilities that can come out of it. Our presenters were:

Jen Soch, VP, Activation Director Advanced TV, Starcom MediaVest Group
Mitch Oscar, EVP, Carat Digital

Jen Soch led off with an overview on the penetration of VOD, which surprisingly has the same usage rate as broadband at this time and seems to be moving in sync.  She then took us through some of the knowledge gained through a two-year trial of addressable TV in an 8000 person community in Huntsville, AL.  The end result is, simply, it works.  But moving forward, we must further define the metrics and reporting and then make the push beyond cable and into broadcast television.

Mitch Oscar then showed us some of the amazing things we can do in targeting with addressable TV.  With commercials broken up into modules, you can even deliver different versions of the same commercial to different people - and all of this on the fly!

This definitely gave a feeling of wow to the attendees in the room.  It will be interesting to see where and how this technology takes off in the coming years.






And with that, the 2008 IAB Leadership Forum: Digital Video comes to a close. It's now time to hit the closing reception and enjoy a tasty cocktail and discuss what we learned today with industry colleagues. 



4:45pm
We just finished up the highly anticipated case study, Sprint, Suave and "In the Motherhood."  For those unfamiliar, "In the Motherhood" is a series of short videos featuring a professional cast and professional writing, but based on stories submitted by and voted on by actual moms.  The tagline is "For Moms. By Moms. About Moms."  The end result is something that is not only funny and entertaining, but also highly engaging.  It was about following up on insights to reach consumers in the right way.

Mindshare, who produced the campaign, knew they could create great entertainment.  But they also knew this entertainment would not have value without the right community.  Therefore, just as much effort was placed into building the community behind the campaign as building the creative in the campaign itself. In incorporating the brands, they made hard choices about where the brands would be a primary feature and where they would be a secondary feature.  This helped achieve a loyal viewership that that translated into a high ROI for the brands.





One more session to go. Be back in an hour with one last update for the day.


3:15pm
We're back!  This morning we heard all about standards, money, and other nuts and bolts behind the advancement of digital video.  Now, it's time to look at the creative.  Our next panel featured leaders in the industry who have successfully embraced and built for three screens.  The panel included:

Moderator: Alan Schulman, Senior Vice President, Executive Creative Director, Executive Director of User Experience, imc2
Nick Johnson, VP National Sales, Internet & Broadband, NBC Universal
Rishi Malhotra, Vice President, Multiplatform Program Marketing, HBO
Jon Vlassopulos, Senior Vice President, Digital Media & Branded Entertainment, Endemol USA

To open, each panelist showed off some creative that has extended a traditional broadcast brand into the worlds of online and mobile.  Nick Johnson gave us a glimpse into the online world of Heroes.  Rishi Malhortra treated the audience to an online short of Big Love.  And, Jon Vlassopulos showed off his hit Get Close To series.

What we learned most out of this session is that the explosion of three screens has led to many new and creative ways to incorporate advertising.  The addition of the mobile and PC screen makes room to incorporate more messaging in ways that are engaging to the viewer. The content producers want to work with the brands and vice versa.









Back with more after our next panel!


12:20pm
The next panel was all about the money.  Where is it going?  Who is spending? What needs to happen to see more move towards digital video. How do you address issues of scale?  What skills does the media planner of today need to have?

Featuring:
Moderator: Patrick Keane, Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer, CBS Interactive
Ian Schafer, CEO, Deep Focus
Steve Robinson, President & Founder, Panache







That's it from the morning sessions.  It's now time for some workshops and then lunch.  I'll be back later this afternoon with updates as they happen from the second half of our agenda.


11:15am
Our first panel of the day was about about the growth of digital video and the challenges and obstacles that are both ahead of us and behind us as this medium continues to expand. The timeliness of the panel happened at a great time with the IAB's Digital Video In-Stream Ad Format Guidelines released today as these guidelines are a giant leap forward in driving efficiency in the industry.  The panel featured:

Dina Kaplan, COO, blip.tv
Deva Bronson, Digital Media Manager, KFC
Ari Paparo, Group Product Manager, Google
Adam Shlachter, Senior Partner, Group Director, Mediaedge:cia
Cheryl Kellond, Vice President, Advertising Marketplaces, Yahoo! Inc.












10:00am
Quincy Smith just delivered an exciting speech - providing a massive amount of information in just under an hour.  Throughout the keynote, the underlying message was about the web being a new medium to attract a new audience and it should not be viewed as cannibalistic to existing broadcast audience. The web can be expansive to broadcast.  Think about the conversation that happens before broadcast and think about the conversation after broadcast. Broadcasters needs to think about how to monetize more of a show moving forward. How do you turn a single night event into the 365 day per year conversation?

He also spoke about the user being the editor and how publishers and broadcasters must become comfortable with that. The user has seen what can be done.  We can't now tell them not to do it anymore.  Instead, we need to educate and incorporate.

Another underlying theme was about the ad as content.  Position the ad in the right space and make it something that excites and engages the consumer - let the ad be an application. People can name their favorite television commercials, but how many can name their favorite online ads.  Its a very significant point.




Our first panel of the day is up next.  Be back with more in an hour!


9:00am
Good morning from the IAB Leadership Forum: Digital Video!  We have an exciting day ahead of us as we explore the world of digital video.  Three screens to mainstream is the theme of the event as we examine how building for the television, PC and mobile screen are becoming the necessity and norm.  Creativity and innovation are everywhere and we'll see some of the best of it today.  The room is filling up and the show is about to begin.  Quincy Smith, President, CBS Interactive opens the show.  Check back in an hour or so for a recap of his keynote.

The blogosphere is talking about IAB President & CEO, Randall Rothenberg's Op-Ed in the Huffington Post: War Against the Web

Perhaps the scariest term in business today is "behavioral targeting." It also turns out to be one of the best practices around to assure the combination of consumer choice and marketing effectiveness on the Internet. And in that gap lies a dilemma for the marketing and media industries - and, indeed, for all citizens. For if fear overtakes reality, it could dramatically limit the accessibility and diversity of the Web.

Here are just a few of the blogs talking about it:

Wall Street Journal All Things Digital

AgencySPY

Defamer

Marked

With our Digital Video Leadership Forum coming up this Monday, I want to spotlight Mediapost's article on the benefits of online video advertising. 

The emergence of elaborated companion banners, animated overlays, repurposed text or product feeds and the ability to run non-video creative are just a few of the more recent innovations.

Video Advertising: A Performance Medium by Any Measure by Bill Todd.

Personalizing your creative video messages are also key in maximizing this technology. 

Not only can you optimize with video, but it is important to keep up to date with search as well. Max Kalehoff reminds us how to do so in this captivating blog post reminding us that we are nothing without a link.

 

Read More:

Video Advertising: A Performance Medium by Any Measure by Bill Todd

Making Video Personal by Phil Leggiere

You're Nothing Without a Link by Max Kalehoff

With barely an acknowledgement of the myriad ways in which the Internet has revolutionized economic development, information access, and communications diversity, an increasingly organized coalition of anti-business groups is mobilizing to get the Government to shut it down.

And the scary thing is: They are succeeding. I’ve detailed this “break-the-Web” effort in an article in yesterday’s Huffington Post. I urge you to print it out, circulate it, and oppose the forces that would force you under. (More on that later.)

Because virtually all of you reading this are scrambling to build your businesses in the face of a looming recession, you’ve probably been too busy to notice that a drive is underway to goad the Federal and State governments to regulate the core processes and technologies that underlie the operations of the Internet. The anti-Internet coalition’s proposals hide under the cover of very real, very legitimate concerns that citizens have over their personal privacy. But rather than focus on the real privacy dangers – loose data security policies, identity theft, Government intrusions into citizens’ phone and email records – these groups aim to shut down “advertising networks” and “third party entities,” including those central to the infrastructure of interactive media and advertising.

Hatred for Consumerism

If it were merely technological ignorance that’s driving them, it would be correctable. But even a casual read shows these groups are actually opposed to the consumer economy itself. And in their hatred for consumerism, they have drafted recommendations so breathtakingly broad that, if they stand, many sites will go under. Particularly vulnerable are the small, ad-supported sites that serve niche interests – the political blogs, ethnic dot-coms, and hobbyist Web sites that depend on ad networks to sell and place their ads. (I identified some of the potential victims in a Business Week article last week: Web communities like Disaboom.com, an ad-supported site for people with disabilities, run by Dr. Glen House, himself a quadriplegic.) Right behind them are the newspaper and magazine companies that are building vertical ad networks to extend their audience reach on the Web.

Here’s a sampling of some of the proposals gaining traction in Washington and State capitals:

• The Connecticut state assembly is likely to pass a bill that labels standard interactive advertising practices “unscrupulous,” and would, for the first time in the U.S., regulate the Web by creating inflexible controls on how any third party involved in Internet advertising collects and uses anonymized data.
• A New York State legislator has introduced a bill that would allow consumers to pull non-identifying information out of aggregated databases and regulate the companies that deliver 90 percent of the ads on the Web.
• Under the implicit threat of formal regulation, the Federal Trade Commission has issued guidelines that would prevent media, agencies, and marketers from using non-identifying data to make ads more relevant and products more effective for consumers. The FTC would require Web site operators to obtain permission from users for any changes in their privacy policies – paradoxically, even if the sites have no information identifying those users or means of getting in touch with them.
• In a signed editorial, The New York Times asked the Federal government to regulate the collection of the types of demographic information marketers have routinely gathered for decades, and recommended that all online data collection, including the measurement of Web traffic, be banned unless users explicitly provide permission.

Let’s be very, very clear: The IAB is utterly committed to protecting citizens’ privacy. Peoples’ names, addresses, Social Security numbers, financial and health records, and anything that can be associated with their identity ought to be under lock and seal, if that’s what they desire. All the major interactive media companies are equally unswerving in their commitment; they know (and have expressed repeatedly) that violating consumer privacy expectations is virtually an invitation to users to flee their sites for friendlier environments. We favor (and are working with other major marketing, media, and consumer associations toward) meaningful self-regulation of consumer privacy online.

But let’s be equally clear that these anti-consumerist efforts are not about protecting peoples’ identities. They are about shutting down consumer marketing – and limiting consumer choice in communications and consumption. Jeff Chester, the frequently quoted proprietor of the Center for Digital Democracy and one of the FTC’s favorite anti-Internet witnesses, has increasingly come clean on his real motivation. He opposes practices “to get individual consumers to behave or act in ways that favor or reflect the marketer’s goals,” he wrote in his blog on April 11. He went at it again this week, writing to Business Week that the Internet is “a commercial surveillance system that rivals the NSA… all so we can be encouraged to behave favorably to some marketing message.”

Lots of excitement here at the IAB, as the User Generated Content & Social Media was released today. User-Generated Content and Social Media Advertising Overview (.pdf) is the most recent in a series of papers that "will lead the way to a vigorous and healthy industry with commonly adopted terminology, practices and standards."

The paper explains how the platforms have fundamentally shifted the digital experience for consumers and advertisers alike, defines UGC and social media, provides a detailed overview of the latest advertising opportunities, and details case studies of campaigns that have successfully utilized UGC and social media.

 

While searching the web looking for hot topics, I found it hard not to spotlight the vigorous work of the IAB’s councils and committees. Specifically, the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Lead Generation Committee who recently released the B2C and B2B Best Practices for U.S.-based Advertisers and Publishers. For those who don’t know, this document directly addresses industry practices that are susceptible to misconduct and lays a clear path for companies that wish to operate as responsible corporate citizens. Take a look at the first two articles from a series of columns authored by members of the IAB’s Lead Generation Committee for MediaPost’s Performance Insider Newsletter related to this topic.  If you like what you read, check the IAB’s press coverage section in the coming weeks for more installments.

Enjoy!

1)      IAB Best Practices Champion Transparency and Consumer Protection by Jeremy Fain, Senior Director of Industry Initiatives and Services, IAB. 

2)      Clearing The Air: Incentive Sites And Online Lead Generation by Gayle Guzzardo, SVP, Product Management of Q Interactive and chairperson of the IAB Lead Generation Committee.

New digital video ad formats are now available for public comment. The public comment period will close on Friday, May 2, 2008, so hurry and join the conversation now!

Welcome to the first installment of Around the Web on the IABlog. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be updating this space regularly with fresh information and news from the interactive industry.

I’m committed to finding you the hottest topics and freshest commentary in the interactive world so please feel free to email me at Shira@iab.net with articles that you feel should be posted.  I can’t promise to get to all of them, but I’ll do the best I can to pick out the most relevant and timely links to highlight in this space. Also, if you like what you see, be sure to sign up for the IABlog RSS feed.

This week I have two pieces to share with you:

1) Initiative’s most recent White Paper by Janice Finkel-Greene which discusses the upcoming transition of television signals from analog to digital. Click here to read the 2009 Digital Transition: Y2K +9?. 

2) Cathy Taylor's piece on The Future of Advertising for the Project on Excellence in Journalism. It draws together a lot of research into a one-stop-shop for understanding what’s going on in media.