• by July 30, 2001

Last month, the Wireless Advertising Association unveiled a comprehensive set of proposed standards for WAP, SMS and PDA advertising to a crowd of more than 100 of the industry's top wireless companies. Through unanimous support of WAA member companies, those proposals for SMS, WAP and PDA advertising today became industry standards.

The proposed standards were required by WAA guidelines to go through a 30-day review period before a final motion was accepted to adopt the standards.

“We are pleased that the organization, through the support of member advertising agencies, wireless device manufacturers and wireless carriers, was able to drive this initiative to standards so early in the evolution of the medium,” said Robert O'Hare, WAA Chairman. “We look forward to continue ground-breaking work from our committees.”

The standards being accepted today create a common set of formats and sizes so that ad creative executions and inventory will be interchangeable. Just as in print, television, and the Internet, an ad agency will write copy or create a graphic in the standardized formats that device manufacturers will build hardware to accept. That creative can then run over any ad network, or with any publisher, since they will have designed their content to leave "holes" for ads in those formats.

The WAA says advertisers can relax knowing that every consumer will get the same message, regardless of which mobile carrier they use or what device is in their pocket.

Those standards include text length guidelines for GSM and non-GSM, text, graphic and interstitials for WAP, and guidelines for PDA and advertisements. A complete list of industry standards can be found at www.waaglobal.org.