• by Jim Meskauskas , March 4, 2004

I have to admit something to y'all. It's been a while since I've handled insertion orders and contracts and the other logistical elements of buying and executing a campaign. But lately, I've been working to get a big campaign for a client up and running and for the most part, have had a good time.

It's refreshing to know that one can still do the heavy lifting if necessary. Dusting off old crystallized knowledge and being able to see clearly through the prism of a media plan is kind of like a renewal of faith in the basic human aptitudes. It's like cooking your own meal, or harvesting your own crops: you discover an old confidence that if the tides of civilization were to turn, you just might have the wherewithal to survive.

But something I wasn't prepared for was the need to go to law school to deal with all the stipulations and exceptions that are carried on nearly every contract going under signature.

I remember back in the old days of this fine business of ours when every site had its own version of an insertion order and requested an advertiser signature. Sites rarely would accept an agency's IO. Sites had teams of lawyers - or a plethora of developers and techno-geeks with experience in intellectual property law or patent law who drew up IOs that would leave the publisher with as many rights as possible, while skewering the agencies and advertisers.

This is why agencies and publishers, with the blessing of the Internet Advertising Bureau and the American Association of Advertising Agencies got together to put together the Standard Terms & Conditions document.

When the T&C document first appeared on the scene, it was heralded by agencies as a monumental leap forward in simplifying a terribly complex buying process. After nearly two years and many committees, version 2.0 was issued.

Since then, for the most part, there has been fairly consistent compliance with the T&C guidelines from most of the publishers and many of the agencies. But in the last few days, I've spent more time talking on the phone about amendments and riders that publishers want to tack onto the Standard Terms & Conditions than I have in drawing up the actual IOs. It seems that everyone wants to exclude themselves from what most of the industry has said it would like to be the rule.

Which leaves one to wonder, what is the point of having Standard Terms & Conditions if no one uses them? Regular acceptance is what leads to standardization, but when major publishers have in-house counsel tweaking dozens of agency contracts daily, there really can be no standard.

Thankfully, publishers like Yahoo!, AOL, and iVillage, along with the IAB in general, have been supporters of the Standard T & C. It seems, however, that there is still a long way to go until publishers relinquish some of the territoriality over rights and protections that has developed over the years if we are to make the contract process run smoothly.

My colleague and partner in crime, Tom Hespos, suggested a really good idea that would help planners and buyers navigate the IAB/AAAAs T & C compliance issues. These organizations should establish a kind of "compliance seal of approval." Sites that have agreed to accept the T & C under common media buying circumstances could post the seal somewhere on their sites under the advertising information heading "seal." Sites could offer media planners and buyers a one-click download of the T & C with some of the typical exceptions that cover a variety of buy conditions common to the kinds of buys advertisers and agencies are making. Having some of the typical exceptions posted would help planners and buyers execute more efficiently.

This may not exactly fix the problem, but it could go a long way towards ameliorating the pain of the post-media selection negotiation process. I'm confident that making the buying of online media more difficult is not going to do a lot to enamor advertisers of the Web.