The standardisation of online advertising formats came a step closer today as the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) and the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe (IAB Europe) launched a new initiative to promote global consistency.
The two groups are hoping that the development of a set of standard formats will make online as easy to plan, buy and create as offline campaigns. The initiative comes in response to demands from the planning, buying and advertiser communities for a simplified, cost effective and creative ad offering.
The package of European Online Ad Formats is a series of recommended ad sizes which will be implemented across EIAA and IAB Europe member networks. The formats are designed to aid the implementation and growth of pan-European online advertising campaigns.
The standardisation should increase the efficiency of planning and executing an online advertising campaign. It is expected to remove the confusion created by sites having disparate format specifications and reduce the number of ads per page.
Historically many web sites have defined the formats for online advertising according to individual site layout which has resulted in many formats being offered to advertisers. Few standard formats have been established to date and the EIAA and IAB members have decided to create this European standard whilst gradually retiring other formats.
“This is another watershed in the internet’s commercial development,” says Danny Meadows-Klue, president of IAB Europe. “These core sizes will become available across thousands of European websites giving advertisers the chance to run pan-European campaigns on a scale never before possible.”
Jupiter Media Metrix forecasts that the European online advertising market will be worth â‚Ź4.0 billion by 2008.
