• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, February 3, 2005

The board of directors of the Interactive Advertising Bureau has asked the trade group to develop a plan to deal with public policy issues that potentially threaten the online advertising business, OMD has learned. The board voted to allocate a new budget, which will likely be used to hire a new staff position and potentially to fund industry and public education efforts, as well as lobbying, an IAB spokeswoman confirmed.

The IAB board action follows a tussle within the organization over how to deal with spyware and adware legislation, and anti-spyware software vendors, including potential threats to third-party cookies. The IAB's associate member board, comprised largely of technology vendors, developers and research suppliers, had been developing a strategy for much of the past year that included industry guidelines and a voluntary petition for best practices that had been nearly ratified, but which unraveled when the associate board introduced the plan to the IAB's board of directors, which are comprised of big portals and publishers.

An associate board member surmised that some of those anti-spyware steps may have conflicted with the plans of big portals which carry great sway within the IAB and the initiative was scuttled.

"Adware and spyware [are] at the top of the list, but there could be other initiatives," confirmed IAB spokeswoman Emily Kutner, adding that it was still too early to say how the new initiative would be structured and how much of the IAB's budget would be allocated toward it. She said the plan could include full, and or part-time staff positions, as well as retaining outside consultants, something the IAB is prone to do.

However, IAB members speculated it was likely that the bureau would hire a senior public policy executive who would at the very least work to coordinate the IAB's efforts with the multitude of lobbying efforts that have grown within the IAB's own member's organizations, as well as across other advertising and media trade associations.

But the IAB's effort may be too little, too late, at least for the anti-spyware legislation, which already is in the process of being reintroduced, and which appears to be acknowledging the importance of preserving the role of third-party cookies (see related story in today's OMD).