IAB is engaged in a sustained effort to spur greater creativity in interactive advertising and speed adoption of new brand-friendly ad formats. Initiatives such as Rising Stars and the IAB MIXX Awards are driving a creative transformation of the interactive advertising space to boost marketers’ confidence that they can successfully build brands online.

Data is essential to the evolution of digital advertising. Data allows the kind of dynamic, customized experiences that people expect online, and in an era of growing accountability, data allows publishers to create better experiences for their consumers, lets advertisers create stronger relationships with their customers, and permits all parties to better track progress.

There is no question that digital video is garnering major consumer attention and that brands want to be a part of the experience. In order to fulfill digital video’s long-term promise of delivering powerful brand advertising at scale, IAB is devoted to the advancement of the digital video medium in the global marketplace. Together with its member companies and in cooperation with the IAB Technology Laboratory, the IAB Digital Video Center produces technical standards, research, and thought leadership critical to the field, while identifying emergent best practices in the fast growing arena of digital video.

The IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report is the industry benchmark for the health of the digital advertising ecosystem. The results reported are considered the most accurate measurement of internet/online advertising revenues since the data is compiled directly from information supplied by companies selling advertising online.

The ground-breaking Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative has one goal—to provide better metrics in digital for brands, agencies, and publishers. Founded by the 4A’s, ANA, and IAB, and administered by the Media Rating Council (MRC), 3MS will revolutionize the way digital media is measured, planned, and transacted across the advertising industry in order to make it a more valuable medium for everyone involved in brand advertising.

The growth in the space has been dizzying—and IAB is best positioned to bring the same supply chain discipline to the mobile marketing sector that it has done for the broader digital advertising space for nearly 20 years. Through the IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, IAB devotes resources to market and consumer research, mobile advertising case studies, executive training and education, supply chain standardization, creative showcases and best practice identification.

Native has become a hot topic in the advertising marketplace, but for the practice to flourish further, it needs consensus on definitions and structure. Marketers are embracing native strategies and publishers are looking for a roadmap that will allow them to take full advantage of the trend. The IAB Native Advertising Task Force is focused on evaluating the value and potential of the emerging native advertising space.

Over the last several years, publishers and advertisers have increasingly adopted programmatic buying and selling of digital inventory into their media strategies. Programmatic’s share of total internet advertising was $10.1 billion in 2014, comprising 20 percent of last year’s overall internet advertising revenues ($49.5 billion) according to the IAB Programmatic Revenue Report. Through its Programmatic Council, IAB aims to bring together all players in the programmatic space to discuss and advance the key business issues in the evolving programmatic marketplace.

Criminal activity threatens to erode trust in the digital ecosystem. Quality, original content is not sufficiently protected against the threats of fraudulent traffic, malware attacks, and IP piracy, and publishers, marketers and agencies stand together to combat these dangerous forces as a unified entity. In response, the 4A’s, ANA, and IAB created the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG). TAG is a first-of-its-kind cross-industry accountability program to create transparency in the business relationships and transactions that undergird the digital ad industry, while continuing to enable the astonishing levels of innovation that have propelled digital advertising into the largest ad medium in the United States.