Jim Ewel, CEO of Adometry, wrote an article for MediaPost’s Blog today about the IAB’s updated Standard Terms & Conditions. Check out his post, “Why The New IAB Guidelines Are Good For Everyone” and discover how the IAB is moving interactive advertising toward becoming even more transparent and accountable. To learn more about one of the industry’s hottest topics, be sure to sign up for our  Terms & Conditions 3.0 Webinar taking place January 26^th at noon.

Andy Atherton, co-founder and chief operating officer of Brand.net, wrote an article that appeared in today’s AdAge about VAST (Digital Video Ad Serving Template). We think  “Ad Network? Video Network? Why Not Both?” takes an interesting look at how VAST opens the door to new innovations and technical advancements in online video advertising. Digital video’s growth is a hot topic in the industry, and its supporting architecture between video players and servers is something the IAB has standardized. In fact, it will be the subject of a panel at the upcoming IAB Annual Leadership Meeting: Ecosystem 2.0 on February 21. Don’t miss it, register today.

The @Plan methodology change, now in beta, should be heralded as an improvement. It is fairly common knowledge that unobtrusive measures of behavior are more accurate than recall based measures. However, the reported inconsistencies tell us that something is really wrong here. Most likely, the current method is completely wrong in which case 10 years of data use and decisions based on that data are questionable. Maybe the new methodology is wrong or maybe it is actually right. Or, the beta is so full of bugs that the new data cannot be relied upon to provide an indication of what the numbers will look like. The uncertainty points to fundamentally flawed business approaches.

Buggy business, you say? Yes. One of the two syndicated measurement services introduces a beta of a new methodology and its clients are already leaking results to the press. The proposed @Plan change is sowing negativity even before it is released. What resonates is not the beta and not that it is likely an effort to improve measurements and not that the @Plan clients are leaking data from a test. What resonates is that interactive measurement sucks. Once again, as an industry, we are showing the advertising community that we are our own worst enemy.

The IAB represents the entire industry and advocates transparency among all parties. Clearly, some of the old rules of media measurement simply do not apply in a transparent world. Research vendors and their clients are accountable to all of the many sites that are not purchasing data when they change methodologies and talk to the press.

It is time that IAB members took advantage of the power of a community of business people who truly want to make interactive media live up to its promise of being most measurable and most accountable. We are that community. We, at the IAB, are who we serve and until the members, publishers and vendors alike, avail themselves of the leadership and power of community, we likely will continue to see public relations fiascos about flawed measurement well into 2010 and beyond.

This inaugural edition of IAB Metrics Blog invites you to dialogue with us, to praise or critique, to propose solutions. Most of all, we invite you to make the IAB the standard bearer in metrics that it is for many other areas of interactive advertising.

He spoke of the “significant shift to digital” spending among his clients, noting that 25% of the global marketing services group’s revenues now derive from interactivities. He said “the importance of technology in our business has mushroomed,” and spoke at length about Google, and about his own acquisition of the “remarkably successful” online advertising network 24/7 Real Media, and of TNS Millward Brown, his data, measurement, and analytics unit.

But not once did he mention his ownership of two of the greatest brand names in advertising, companies whose hostile acquisitions 20+ years ago put Sir Martin on the world map: Ogilvy and J. Walter Thompson. Although he nodded in the direction of “the great idea” – ad agencies’ value proposition for the better part of 60 years -- he also gave it the back of his hand. “People in the advertising business, in the traditional media advertising business, would say the message determines the medium,” Mr. Sorrell said. “I would say that has totally changed.”

But of course, it has not totally changed. Rather, it’s the ground on which one of the greatest battles in both business history and social history is being fought. The question at the heart of it, although never purely articulated, is likely to determine the fortunes of every company that sells goods or services to consumers or customers.

The issue is this: Is marketing a strategic resource or a procured commodity?

If you listen closely, you’ll discern that this question is tearing apart the entire marketing-media ecosystem, with combatants staking out positions on either side of an increasingly great divide. On one side, people are speaking the language of efficiency: of online networks, demand-side exchanges, real-time bidding, inventory and impressions, buying agencies and procurement offices, of driving the marginal cost of production and distribution of billions of commodity products called banners, spots, and pages as close to zero as they can. On the other side of this gap are people speaking the language of growth: of brand affinity, premium price realization, consumer intimacy, dialogue, social media and the social graph, and of the insights that can generate consumer satisfaction and new revenue streams.

At times, the fissure seems akin to a civil war, with brother fighting brother over unconsidered ideologies. Holding company owners are battling their own agencies. Brand makers’ Chief Marketing Officers are fighting their companies’ Chief Financial Officers. Measurement companies are measuring the wrong things, incurring the ire of marketers and media alike. Advertising pricing systems in place for generations are coming under fire. Publishers’ sales forces are trying to keep up with the mixed messages.

Meanwhile, the people who really matter – the Chief Executive Officers at consumer marketers – are just beginning to wake from their inattention to render a verdict on where their funds will flow. I’m hoping this analysis – admittedly quite long, and reeking of history – will help.

Jon Leibowitz, Chairman

Federal Trade Commission

600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20580

Dear Mr. Chairman:

So there I was last Saturday, about to send out on my Twitter feed -- which automatically updates my Facebook page and links to my personal blog -- a photograph of this wonderful baked halibut dish I'd just made as a surprise for my wife. I was in the middle of typing a rave review of the recipe, which I'd pulled from my favorite cookbook, Delicioso! The Regional Cooking of Spain by Penelope Casas. But before I could press the “post” button, I stopped and canceled the whole thing.

I remembered that the book was a freebie, sent to me by an editor at the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house 13 years ago. And I didn't want you guys to haul me into court and fine me for violating the rules you’ve just promulgated to muzzle social media.

I know what you’re thinking – I’m just confused. But so are the 22 million bloggers currently collecting audiences in the United States and the nearly 140 million Americans registering news and opinions through social media channels like Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, and Twitter. The source of the confusion: The new set of Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, issued on October 5 by the Federal Trade Commission that you chair.

As you're undoubtedly aware, the revised Guides, an update of principles the Commission originally established in 1980, have generated a firestorm of controversy within the ad-supported interactive media industry. Of particular concern are footnotes, asides, and elaborations in the Guides – as well as reported commentary by Commission staff – which indicate that opinions published by individuals have less protection than speech promulgated by large corporations; that “traditional” distribution channels deserve more protection than innovative online channels; and, finally, that the Internet, the cheapest, freest, most accessible communications medium ever invented, should have less freedom than other media.

Different Disclosure Requirements

It’s the Commission’s own words that have sewn this controversy and confusion. On pages 47 and 48 of the 81-page Guides, your staff

...acknowledges that bloggers may be subject to different disclosure requirements than reviewers in traditional media. In general, under usual circumstances, the Commission does not consider reviews published in traditional media (i.e., where a newspaper, magazine, or television or radio station with independent editorial responsibility assigns an employee to review various products or services as part of his or her official duties, and then publishes those reviews) to be sponsored advertising messages. Accordingly, such reviews are not “endorsements” within the meaning of the Guides...

In contrast, if a blogger’s statement on his personal blog or elsewhere (e.g., the site of an online retailer of electronic products) qualifies as an “endorsement” – i.e., as a sponsored message – due to the blogger’s relationship with the advertiser or the value of the merchandise he has received and has been asked to review by that advertiser, knowing these facts might affect the weight consumers give to his review.

With all due respect, Mr. Chairman: Huh? Does the FTC really intend to probe America’s opinion-mongering apparatus this closely? Do you have a team of Freuds and Jungs able to examine “the weight” consumers give such opinion – and the way they weigh that weight?

Naturally, this expedition from Oceania – that’s the place Big Brother ruled – should be worrisome to all Americans, and to all viewers, readers, listeners, users, and providers of any communications medium. But for the 400 members of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, most of which are small and medium-sized enterprises struggling to build their businesses in the face of the worst decline in marketing spending since the 1930’s, the implication that online social media represent a separate class of communications channels with less Constitutional protection than corporate-owned newspapers, radio stations, or cable television networks is of particularly grave concern.

They – and we -- are not arguing that bloggers and social media be treated differently than incumbent media. After all, most newspapers, magazines, radio stations and television networks, in recognition that Americans are embracing new forms of social communications, have established their own blogs, boards, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and the like. Rather, we're saying the new conversational media should be accorded the same rights and freedoms as other communications channels.

Stop Deceptive Advertising

All of us would agree that false and deceptive advertising should be stopped, and penalized when it slips through and is caught. We agree that paid testimonials and endorsements should be labeled. But in taking business ethics and attempting to give it the force of law, the Commission is stretching the definition of remuneration to ludicrous lengths. More frightening – certainly to the 22,000 womens-issue bloggers” on BlogHer, the 218 sports-fan facilitators on SB Nation, and the 302 people Tweeting to me daily – is that the FTC’s new Guides open the door to extremely selective pursuit and prosecution of those least able to defend themselves against government's hammer: the solo entrepreneurs and opinionated individuals who are most vital to the functioning of our democracy and economy.

That fear, I fear, is supported by the Commission’s own words. For example, in an interview with the blog edrants.com, FTC Assistant Director of Advertising Practices Richard Cleland took decades of common practice in offline media -- specifically the acceptance by reviewers of free books from publishers -- and said that bloggers engaging in the same activities could be subject to prosecution. “The primary situation is where there’s a link to the sponsoring seller and the blogger,” said Mr. Cleland. The repeated supply of free books could constitute “compensation,” thus triggering an FTC review and, possibly, sanctions.

“You can return it,” Mr. Cleland said, when asked how a social mediator could avoid this fate. “You review it and return it. I’m not sure that type of situation would be compensation.” Otherwise, “if a blogger received enough books, he could open up a used bookstore.”

The ignorance of established offline media practices is more than mildly surprising. Take a walk through New York’s mecca of used books, The Strand, or the Portland emporium Powell’s, and you’ll find bin upon bin of “reviewers’ copies,” direct contravention of Mr. Cleland’s declaration that “most of the newspapers have very strict rules about that and on what happens to those products.” (My own shelf of review copies from my days as a journalist attest to how wrong he is.)

Shackle Online Media

But of greater concern is that the Commission is translating this ignorance into rules that would specifically shackle online media while exempting our offline cousins and competitors from equivalent constraint. Publish? You might perish: “Consumers who join word of mouth marketing programs that periodically provide them products to review publicly (as opposed to simply giving feedback to the advertiser) will also likely be viewed as giving sponsored messages.” Have a lot of Facebook friends? Better watch it, you dot-commie: “If that blogger frequently receives products from manufacturers because he or she is known to have wide readership within a particular demographic group that is the manufacturers’ target market, the blogger’s statements are likely to be deemed to be ‘endorsements.’”

Indeed, to copious industry protests that provision of free samples, tickets, and services to independent reviewers has been a staple of media since media began and shouldn’t be regulated more strictly online than off, the Commission simply disagreed and said it will “consider each use of these new media on a case-by-case basis for purposes of law enforcement.” So if Niero Gonzales fails to flash “freebie” across each review of a first-person shooter posted on his gamer site Destructoid.com, will he be dragged down to Pennsylvania Avenue for a civil investigation? If I blog on randallrothenberg.com about the dozens of free management books I receive each year from publishers, will I, John Wiley & Sons, or Harper Business be subject to a penalty? Again with all due respect, Mr. Chairman, the Commission’s Guides really provides no guidance at all.

You must know that, because in the days following the release of the revised Guides, the FTC has been furiously backtracking about their implications, in an apparent attempt to soothe the blogosphere. "We are not planning on investigating individual bloggers," Mary Engle, the Commission’s Associate Director for Advertising Practices, told reporters this week. "We will be focusing any enforcements on advertisers, not on individual endorsers.”

But the Commission is being disingenuous. “The recent creation of consumer-generated media means that in many instances, endorsements are now disseminated by the endorser, rather than by the sponsoring advertiser,” the Guides state. “In these contexts, the Commission believes that the endorser is the party primarily responsible for disclosing material connections with the advertiser.”

Individuals More Liable

In other words, the Guides DO allow you to pursue bloggers. They DO hold individuals more liable than larger corporations. They DO explicitly say online social media have less protection than offline corporate media. They DO obstruct online companies’ opportunities to drive cultural conversation more than offline companies’. They DO threaten with prosecution book publishers, movie producers, and other companies that supply products to individual social media conversationalists.

This confusion easily could have been avoided. The IAB and other industry organizations clearly identified the risks to free expression and provided the FTC significant, formal First Amendment guidance when you first mooted the new guidelines earlier this year. We offered to bring in bloggers, social media executives and others from among our membership and work with you to develop practical guidelines and self-regulatory mechanisms that would protect consumers from real harm, while assuring that independent opinion in digital media isn’t stifled.

But Commission staff did not follow up with us on our offer, held no public hearings on the proposed Guides, and ultimately dismissed our concerns. Instead, they took the perverse - and Constitutionally dubious - step of saying that individuals writing in social media bear greater liability than do those writing for offline, one-way media.

Mr. Chairman, these are the types of vital regulatory issues that, if decided without due care and reasoned judgment, will impair the continued growth of news and content in the online space. I urge the Commission to retract the current set of Guides and to commence a fair and open process in order to develop a roadmap by which responsible online actors can engage with consumers and continue to provide their invaluable content and services.

Regards,

Randall Rothenberg

President and Chief Executive Officer

Interactive Advertising Bureau

"Marketers see a benefit of using display to support brand building on online as well as on mobile channels, especially through use of the rich media [interactive display],.."

"Mobile marketing is more about consumer touchpoints than media math. Before the question of whether to use mobile gets to the plan level, which is fraught with tough decisions and fights for survival, marketing leaders should be planning to use it far earlier in the decision process."

"Unlike static and one-way communications channels, mobile is about context and behaviors -- great things for marketers. Here are a few ways to market through mobile that can be especially effective in reaching mobile consumers."

"This is vastly important right now. In this economic environment, consumers are spending less, switching brands and going online to hunt for deals. Still, almost everyone makes unplanned purchases, and half of those purchase decisions happen in the aisle. Mobile presents a tremendous opportunity for brands to claim the last few feet and turn browsers into buyers."

Our friends at Smartbrief just did a great interview with Sarah Hofstetter, VP of Emerging Media and Client Strategy at 360i, who is a keynote speaker at our upcoming Social Media Marketplace on May 18.

Now is a fantastic opportunity for brands to not only learn from those mistakes but take a disciplined, smart approach to social marketing, understanding how to motivate and engage audiences in their environments, resulting in advocacy, preference, sharing and loyalty.

Read the full interview on SmartBlog here: If You Can Get to Just 1: IAB Social Media Marketplace

And don't forget to register for the IAB Social Media Marketplace.

4 simple rules for generating traffic from forums

Don’t mention your Web site. Yes, you read that right. Do not mention your Web site in posts or refer to your signature, unless it is abundantly, extremely clear that it is acceptable. This isn’t your Twitter account or your Facebook page – this is the community space. The way you generate traffic from forums is generally through your signature. You do great things, you help people, and you make good posts. That makes people look at your signature and your profile, which is how you receive traffic.

via smartblogs.com

4 Lessons for Social Media Marketers

4. Creativity wins A marketer with an understanding of social media and the need for engagement online tends to think outside the box. They don’t see Facebook or blogging, instead they see vessels for a conversation. Because of that mindset they’re poised to be creative with their social strategy.

via mashable.com

plus, here's a video describing Social Marketing in Plain English

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter

What to focus on and when, is always the $64,000 dollar question (or adjusted for inflation, the $495,000 dollar question). In the public policy arena, the question compounds: where should I be focusing my attention? Local and state affairs? Hill happenings? Regulatory proceedings? Percolating academic research? Consumer advocate agendas? These are the kinds of questions that keep Starbucks on the S&P 500. To that end, the IAB would like to introduce our members to a new feature on our IAB Public Policy homepage , www.iab.net/public_policy  .  Here we’ll be providing our members with the latest legislative developments on the state, federal and regulatory levels, as well as highlighting current topics, trends, developments, and events that are inhabiting the interactive advertising ecosystem – and much like a “real” ecosystem, it’s often the small things that end-up blindsiding you.

In this inaugural launch, you’ll find the first of what will be a series of monthly legislative updates, as well as a short piece highlighting the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and its potential impact on online data collection and advertising. With all the noise out there about “regulating” online advertising, it’s worth taking a moment to look at existing legislation, to understand some of the context that has contributed to the current debate.

In the upcoming months you can expect to see monthly legislative updates, as well as short “think” pieces covering a diversity of topics from internet advertising taxation legislation to the technology-focused agenda of a new Administration. We here at the IAB hope that you can use this new resource to provide you with a quick insight into the sometimes messy business of politics, as well as a preview of new issues and concerns coming down the pipeline.

Twitter Updates

First published in 1967, "Strategy in Advertising":http://adage.com/columns/article?article_id=105066 remains the best single-volume work on the science of media mix modeling and allocation. That's not surprising, because its author was a brilliant and widely respected social scientist, who for years served as the executive vice president of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau and the de facto dean of media researchers in the United States. Bogart (who died in 2005) was of that generation of sociologists who saw both the bad and the good that managed communications can do. Born in Poland, his observations as an American soldier in Europe at the end of World War II -- his confrontation with the horrifying results of Nazi propaganda -- prompted him to become a sociologist. Among his post-war projects was the research that underlay the desegregation of the U.S. armed forces.

I mention Bogart's background and his grounding in science because the second page of his classic book on advertising strategy contains one of the most contrarian lines ever written by a scientist. "Advertisements," he writes, "may be evaluated scientifically; they cannot be created scientifically."

Leo Bogart no doubt would be amused that, some four decades after he penned his great book, we're still fighting the old art vs. science war in advertising. But we are -- and it's a war worth ending, because it misses the point entirely.

Two weeks ago, I published a clog titled, "A Bigger Idea: A Manifesto on Interactive Advertising Creativity." The observations and hypotheses -- that our direct response heritage has hindered this medium's hospitality to brand advertisers, that we must incentivize creative excellence, that we need to integrate technologists as full partners into creative teams -- apparently have resonated.

Ah, hell -- they became the talk of the clogosphere, and for that we're extremely grateful. The French Revolution began in salons and coffee shops, so no reason the interactive creative revolution can't begin here!

We furthered the cause subsequently at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Orlando, FL -- the Ecosystem 2.0 conference, as we call it -- earlier this week. There, I disclosed that, for the first time, IAB will invite creative agencies into the interactive advertising format standardization process. We also announced the formation of IAB's first Agency Advisory Board, with senior executive representatives from a dozen top creative, digital and media agencies, including:

• Brad Brinegar, Chairman and CEO of McKinney, and Chair of the Agency Advisory Board
• Tom Bedecarré, CEO, AKQA
• Jeff Benjamin, Interactive Creative Director, Crispin Porter + Bogusky Advertising
• Alan Cohen, CEO of OMD USA, OMD Los Angeles.
• Colleen DeCourcy, Chief Digital Officer, TBWA Worldwide
• Brian DiLorenzo, Director of Integrated Production and Executive Director of Content, BBDO
• David Droga, Founder and Chairman, Droga5
• Sarah Fay, CEO, Carat North America
• Maria Luisa Francoli, Global CEO, MPG
• Jean-Philippe Maheu, Chief Digital Officer, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide
• Benjamin Palmer, Co-Founder, CEO, Barbarian Group
• Steve Wax, Partner and Chief Narratologist and Co-Founder, Campfire

But this is not a revolution against science, as some have characterized it. It's a war against the mismanagement of marketing communications by people who don't have the background or experience to help marketers use all the tools and services available to them to grow profitably. In that war, as IAB Chair Wenda Harris Millard put it so eloquently at our conference, both art and science have a place.

It's important for all of us who would offer our services to marketers and consumers to know how to arrange the seats at this table.