In an effort to get out in front
of the rapid adoption of ad blocking technologies -- and more importantly, behaviors -- the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s “Tech Lab” this morning issued a set of principles
intended to “guide the next phases” of technical standards for the digital advertising supply chain.
“We messed up,” IAB Senior Vice President-Technology and
Ad Operations Scott Cunningham concedes -- not once, but twice -- in a post announcing the new principles, dubbed LEAN, an acronym that stands for
“light, encrypted, ad choice supported, non-invasive ads.”
Cunningham, who also serves as general manager of the lab, implied the mess was due to the rush to build the
early Internet’s technical infrastructure without anticipating the impact the current state of intrusive advertising clutter would have on the “user experience” and said the
principles are intended to correct that imbalance going forward.
Citing the “rise of ad blocking” explicitly, Cunningham implied the principles are still formative and
invited “all parties for public comment” before ratifying them. He added that, “‘LEAN ads’ do not replace the current advertising standards,” but are intended to
direct the industry toward “an alternative set of standards that provide choice for marketers, content providers, and consumers.”
As for an explicit description of the
actual principles, well, they were kind of lean too. Here’s how Cunningham describes them:
“Among the many areas of concentration, we must also address frequency capping on
retargeting in ad tech and make sure a user is targeted appropriately before, but never after they make a purchase. If we are so good at reach and scale, we can be just as good, if not better, at
moderation. Additionally, we must address volume of ads per page as well as continue on the path to viewability. The dependencies here are critical to an optimized user experience.”