The Interactive Advertising Bureau on Tuesday announced final guidelines for over-the-page rich media ad units at the Interactive Advertising World Conference and Expo. The guidelines also extend to
expandable ads, floating ads, between-page, and in-stream units. The guidelines were set after two months of feedback from industry players and were developed in order to help standardize the online
advertising process from concept to implementation. The guidelines suggest that all audio must be user-initiated--with the exception of ads that run in a context where the user has already accepted
audio (i.e., an ad that runs during a user-initiated movie trailer containing audio.) The guidelines also specify that all ads must offer a "close box" or "skip-ad" button, and that animation length
for in-page, expandable, and over-the-page ads is 15 seconds. Animation length for between-page and in-stream ads is either 15 or 30 seconds. The IAB's Rich Media Task Force is led by Mike Hurt,
Director, Group Planning Manager, MSN and Todd Teresi, VP-Sales Operations, Yahoo! The final guidelines are available at www.iab.net/standards/richmedia.
