• by Ken Liebeskind , December 5, 2001

Online advertising may have had a slow year in 2001 but the Interactive Advertising Bureau is up and running.

The industry trade group held its annual meeting yesterday at the @d:tech show in New York. Both the IAB's activities and online advertising issues were discussed.

Attendees learned that the IAB has a new CEO, Greg Stuart, who introduced the session with a brief review on the online advertising environment. While the closing of 700 dot-coms and the general economic slump have hurt online advertising this year, there are many positives, including the fact that there are 115 million Internet users in the U.S. today, up 15% from last year and broadband usage has increased 130%. More than 1000 online advertisements have been tested, with 80% proving successful according to different metrics.

Stuart also mentioned IAB initiatives that have pushed the industry ahead, such as the introduction of new marketing units and the establishment of terms and conditions for Internet advertising and rich media guidelines. The IAB has also established a media buying and planning task force and worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers on Internet advertising revenue reports.

Shelbie Bonnie, the IAB chairman and the chairman/CEO of CNET Networks, spoke next, supporting Stuart's enthusiasm, calling online advertising "the central marketing platform for all companies five years from now."

Tom Hyland, a PricewaterhouseCoopers chairman, offered some recent online advertising spending statistics. In a brief summation of an extended presentation he'll give at @d:tech today, he said Q3 revenue was $1.8 billion, a 4.1% drop from Q2 and a 9.8%t drop from Q3 2000. Revenue was $9.5 billion for 2001 to date, an 8.4% drop from 2000. But he said the drops are less than those for traditional media this year.

A number of panel discussions followed, with industry leaders shedding light on a variety of subjects, from selling online advertising to ad research to the latest online ad formats.

The next session, "Managing Sales in a Down Market," featured salespeople from top sites who explained some of their strategies for selling Internet advertising in hard times, such as bypassing media buyers in an effort to reach people with more buying power. "Get to know where the purse strings are," one of the salespeople said.

Rex Briggs, a principal of Marketing Evolution and the IAB's chief researcher, discussed some of the research the IAB has commissioned and how to use it on sales calls. He discussed research on campaigns to promote short-term sales and new brand awareness and showed how it can be used to tell prospective advertisers how much new business their online advertising would bring. For instance, an 8% jump in brand awareness in a campaign that reached 75 million people, would increase a sponsor's audience by a few million people, Briggs said.

The "New Advertising Models" discussion featured representatives from four companies offering a variety of rich and streaming media products. One of them, Viewpoint, has signed an agreement with AOL to integrate its player into AOL 7.0. Everyone who gets AOL 7.0 will get the Viewpoint player, enabling them to see rich media ads Viewpoint plays. The deal benefits both Viewpoint and AOL, who will be able to serve ads to millions of AOL subscribers. The ads include one for Ford Explorer, which broke yesterday, which is rich media in all its glory, showing not just a Ford Explorer driving across the screen but a number of product features shown in moving graphic detail.