Commentary
Leading the Charge: Greg Stuart Spreads His Wings at IAB
- by Masha Geller , October 24, 2002
That’s a tall order in today’s tight economic climate, even though the recession is said to be over and the online advertising industry has almost come out of the dust created by the infamous dot-com bubble burst. Believe it or not, there are still people out there who don’t believe in Internet advertising — and that way of thinking is the biggest obstacle in Greg Stuart’s way.
Stuart was officially appointed president and CEO of the organization in April, but he’s really had the job since last October, when former head of the IAB Robin Webster took a leave of absence and subsequently decided not to come back. And Stuart is just beginning to spread his wings, spurred on by a mission to represent the interests of companies that sell more than 75% of all online advertising, including AOL, CNET, DoubleClick, MSN, Walt Disney Internet Group, Yahoo!, and many others.
It’s no surprise the IAB executive committee gave him the reins. Stuart has worked at a number of leading traditional brand advertising agencies in New York, including Young & Rubicam, Jordan McGrath and Partners, and WRG BDDP. He handled clients such as American Express, AT&T, Procter & Gamble, Kraft, and 25 other major U.S. brands, amassing extensive marketing, media planning and media research experience. Stuart began his interactive career in 1993, leading the Interactive Communications Group at Y&R's Wunderman Cato Johnson agency as SVP and general manager.
Will that experience, and what many have termed his "infectious enthusiasm," be enough to help him rescue an organization that has been often criticized for being slightly "behind the times"?
"I would agree that the IAB has fallen in to disrepair," says Stuart, explaining that the organization didn’t "make the transition between volunteer and paid professional staff as well or as quickly as we should have. Robin was the first paid staff person. She built a great foundation, and what I’m going to do is build on that foundation."
That foundation is obviously a strong one, since Stuart has been able to double the membership of the organization in the few short months he has been on the job, adding some significant players, like LookSmart, MTV Networks, NetCreations, and Winstar Interactive/Interep Interactive. If it looks as if the IAB is made up of website publishers alone, there is a reason for that. "It is the responsibility of the media organizations whose life or death depends on [interactive advertising revenue] to step in and fix everything," Stuart says. "It’s not the marketers’ or the agencies’ responsibility to fix it."
Moreover, "it is my firm belief that it is the responsibility of every publisher to join the IAB, whether they like what they’re doing or not, and yes, I will be calling them all shortly," he says. "We’re not going to accept complaining or lack of involvement."
That doesn’t mean Stuart doesn’t want to hear what agencies and advertisers have to say. In fact, he just got the executive committee of the IAB to let him change the bylaws and establish an agency advisory council, which will be a group of agencies, marketers, and vendors who can join the IAB and "help us help them," says Stuart, quoting Jerry McGuire.
One of Stuart’s first major initiatives at the helm of the organization was the release of the Measurement Guidelines in January. The IAB hailed the guidelines as a "landmark" accomplishment, but the industry’s reception was somewhat divided. Based on an independently conducted PricewaterhouseCoopers study and input from some of interactive’s biggest players, the guidelines dealt with issues that have long plagued the online ad industry: measuring ad impressions, clicks, page impressions, and visitors, and verifying ad delivery. Unfortunately, some said that even though the release was a step in the right direction overall, the guidelines weren’t calling for "any significant change to the status quo."
Stuart says the criticism was unfounded, explaining that no one really understood how bad the problem was. Standards and measurement was the Tower of Babel, he says, and all the guidelines attempted to do was move everyone to the same level. On the other hand, Stuart says, "if we think that getting measurement guidelines done is the answer, we’re asking the wrong question. We need to get everyone to believe in the numbers, not the guidelines."
Stuart is currently working with The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), Dynamic Logic, Forrester Research, and Marketing Evolution's Rex Briggs to conduct another research study that aims to validate the importance of online advertising in the overall marketing mix. In early June, the organization announced plans to conduct a second, more extensive study involving more than 20 publishers and world-leading marketers, including Colgate Palmolive, General Mills, ING, and McDonald's. The six-to-nine-month research project is designed to expand upon the landmark findings of the similar Unilever/MSN study that the IAB and the ARF conducted not too long ago.
Stuart hopes the study will "change forever the way in which marketers look at and use the interactive medium," adding that in his previous agency experience, "media teams had no idea what the optimized level of spending in each media contributed to most efficiently building the brand." The study is meant to help solve the puzzle.
Another upcoming release will be the Q3 online ad spending report. The IAB, thanks to its relationship with PricewaterhouseCoopers’ New Media Group, has earned its place as the official scorekeeper of the industry. Even eMarketer, the toughest online research watchdog, has selected the IAB’s Internet Ad Revenue Report for 2001 as the benchmark source for measuring the growth of Internet ad revenue.
Stuart was particularly pleased with eMarketer’s endorsement. "While all advertising sectors have seen measurable declines, online advertising, while down, is not in nearly as much trouble as other sectors, which are experiencing double-digit declines in revenue," he says. "For the sake of clarity in our industry, it is time for us to call to task those organizations that have what we assume are significant flaws in their methodology, and politely ask them to either do the proper research or admit that their efforts are, at best, counterproductive, and may, in our opinion, be fiscally irresponsible."
Under Stuart’s guidance, the IAB, with a little help from the American Association of Advertising Agencies, has also finally made good on a promise made almost a year ago — to deliver an updated, more comprehensive version of Terms & Conditions for Internet Advertising. The new Ts&Cs include two key elements not addressed in last year's rendition; the first relates to third-party ad-serving parameters; the second covers liability limitations. Interestingly enough, the industry was fairly blasé about this release. One senior media supervisor at a major Mediacom subsidiary, who asked not to be identified, thinks the new Ts&Cs "provide an excellent and fair framework for doing business" but feels there is more work to be done because they are "too fair." He says, "I'm left with the unenviable task of persuading my organization to adopt these terms and conditions, which represent a significant departure from the terms by which we do business on a daily basis." Moreover, he expresses concern about the future adoption of the new version. "It will not be an easy fight to have them ratified by a number of agencies," he says, suggesting that in order for that ratification to happen, either many top-tier publishers should band together immediately and require that these terms be accepted (which has not yet happened) or a number of agencies should have crusades internally to convince their management to adopt them. "Without significant agency approval, these terms will do nothing, as they did before when [the previous version] left out third-party ad serving," he says.
Stuart is more optimistic. "The new Version 2.0 Ts&Cs reflect the state of the industry today and a greater understanding, on the part of agencies and publishers, of each other's businesses and business objectives. In effect, we have formalized the way many agencies and publishers are already doing business. As the industry progresses, so will these Ts&Cs, and we will continue to meet regularly to keep in step with this evolution."
And that, in a nutshell, is Stuart’s goal — to keep up with the online advertising industry and guide it as best he can into the future.
