Here are just a few of the many, many things we’ve accomplished with and for our members and the industry in the last 12 months:
Supporting the Evolution of Digital Media
Media habits are changing quickly and at IAB we are committed to understanding how our industry can leverage those changes to create the kind of future we desire. Launched in April, the inaugural IAB PlayFronts is a marketplace dedicated entirely to advertising and partnership opportunities in the exciting and evolving gaming and esports industry. The 2022 IAB NewFronts: Stream On (which were back live and in-person and also streamed on IAB.com) brought buyers and sellers together once again in early May and offered a first look at the latest digital content from the major publishers in media and entertainment as well as insights from key tech enablers. And the 2022 IAB Podcast Upfront: Hear and Now virtual event on May 10-12 gave brands and agencies exclusive “first-listen” access to the year’s most exciting releases, previews of creative opportunities, and insights that will define the podcast landscape for the year ahead. Supporting our ongoing mission of offering guidance to buyers and sellers of digital video, IAB in partnership with Advertiser Perceptions and SMI released this year’s bellwether Video Ad Spend Report at the NewFronts announcing that digital video ad spend grew 49% year over year and is expected to grow another 26% in 2022 to reach $49.2 billion. The IAB U.S. Podcast Advertising Revenue Study, released during the Podcast Upfront and prepared by PwC, is designed to provide guidance for publishers and ad buyers on how they can identify the most profitable monetization and ad investment opportunities. Over the coming months our events portfolio will be addressing key issues around data and technology, enabling marketers to find the right audiences, engage consumers, measure, and optimize in a rapidly changing advertising ecosystem, including Audience Connect on September 13 and 14, which will demystify finding and engaging new customers in a fragmented media landscape and the Brand Disruption Summit 2022: Navigating The Now in October, which will help brands identify strategies and tools as they deal with inflation, supply chain sclerosis, and macro-economic headwinds. We have an ambitious event schedule for 2023 as well, starting with the all-important IAB Annual Leadership Meeting which will be held in Marco Island, Florida on January 22-24.
Furthering Next-Generation Measurement Standards
Addressing modern management’s expectation of smarter and more accountable marketing and media spend, the IAB Digital Audio Measurement Guide, developed in partnership with many members of the IAB Audio Committee and Audio Board, released during the Podcast Upfronts, provides a one-stop-shop overview of advanced measurement solutions that are available in the space. And in a joint collaboration between IAB, IAB Tech Lab, and the Media Rating Council (MRC), IAB released the Intrinsic In-Game (IIG) Measurement Guidelines to establish updated measurement guidelines for ads that appear within gameplay. The State of Data: The Measurement Dilemma examines changes that will disrupt how the industry conducts business, identifies and connects with audiences, and engages in the media planning and buying process overall. Measurement as marketers know it today is going away, and the industry is not moving fast enough to prepare. The report provides a detailed action plan for buyers, sellers, and ad tech platforms. And we will release a second part of the 2022 IAB State of Data Report at Audience Connect to address first-party data and addressability solutions.
Advancing Privacy and Addressability
Data is now central to everything we do. In advance of the March 1 congressional hearing on the “Banning Surveillance Advertising Act,” legislation that would decimate the digital advertising industry and harm every business that depends on it, IAB submitted a letter on behalf of its more than 700 members to House Energy & Commerce Committee leaders. Internet for Growth, a coalition of hundreds of small businesses and creators, was busy during Small Business Week in May. An advocacy campaign has generated over 7,000 letters to members of Congress, ordinary citizens, and business owners urging elected officials to avoid the unintended consequences of legislation punishing Big Tech. In March, President Joe Biden and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made the long-awaited announcement that the United States and the European Union have agreed, in principle, to the Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework (the Framework), after more than a year of negotiations. IAB announced its support for the agreement in principle to solve EU court decisions that invalidated an earlier version on which American companies relied to do transatlantic business.
Creating Technical Standards to Spur Growth
To accelerate industry innovation and growth, the Tech Lab is producing and helping companies implement global technical standards and solutions for digital media and advertising. The IAB Tech Lab updated ads.txt and app-ads.txt version 1.1 to include two new values for publishers to declare within their ads.txt files and further strengthen ads.txt as a tool to reduce fraud in buying and selling of advertisements on websites, mobile apps, and connected TV. Additionally, the seller defined audience (SDA) specification was finalized and allows publishers, data management platforms (DMPs), and data providers to scale first-party data responsibly and reliably without data leakage or reliance on deprecated IDs and/or new, untested technologies. The digital video marketplace continues to diversify and increase in complexity. Released for public comment in March, the updated Digital Video and CTV Ad Format Guidelines addresses this challenge by bringing more standardization of ad formats to the industry. OpenRTB is the communication protocol that enables real-time bidding. OpenRTB 2.6 includes features to support CTV buying and selling including new attributes and guides for buying and selling ad pods and new objects to describe channel and network of content. And the Global Privacy Platform (GPP) is a unified global architecture to manage consumer privacy preferences according to local level regulations. It will streamline technical privacy standards into a singular schema and set of tools which adapt to regulatory and commercial market demands across channels.
Investing in Essential Industry Research
IAB is committed to investing in essential research to help members and the industry better understand the digital media and advertising trends shaping our industry as well as analyzing where companies are spending money. In addition to State of Data 2022: The Measurement Dilemma, Video Ad Spend & 2022 Outlook and the U.S. Podcast Advertising Revenue Report mentioned above, IAB research efforts in 2022 included the Internet Advertising Revenue Report: Full Year 2021. Now in its 26th year, it serves as the industry benchmark for digital advertising revenues in the U.S. Conducted by PwC, it provides an in-depth, analytical review of 2021 and puts forth thoughts on the key trends that industry leaders are focused on. Finally, over the last 12 months, we have also explored the U.S. digital ad investment outlook projections in the current macroeconomic environment for the first and second half of 2022.