• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 19, 2023

Lost in the shuffle of Advertising Week news, Omnicom Media Group (OMG) has been issuing a call for new standards governing various media, including social, retail, programmatic and CTV.

The proposed new standards (see rubrics above and below) are the outgrowth of an ad hoc collaboration of OMG agencies, clients and media partners dubbed the "Council on Accountability and Standards," or CASA, OMG says it launched in 2020.

The agency describes CASA as being "committed to enhancing buyer control, seller transparency and brand safety for advertisers across developing media channels by empowering buyers by defining and core advertiser rights and driving corresponding media owner capabilities that empower marketers and hold partners accountable, and that this week's releases are the result of three years of discussions with the CASA participants.

The first of the rubrics to be released covers advertisers' rights and social media company remedies governing social media advertising (see above).

OMG said eight social media platforms have been working with the CASA initiative and have "either fully enabled, live, in beta testing or agreed in principle across all five CASA pillar capabilities."

OMG also unveiled a proposed set of standards governing supply-side platforms (SSP) in programmatic advertising buys (see below), which OMG Managing Director for Digital Activation Ryan Eusanio said were conceived in response to the Association of National Advertisers' recent report documenting the $13 billion magnitude of so-called "made-for-advertising" sites, or MFAs.

"Revelations about the prevalence of Made for Advertising (MFA) sites siphoning spend from legitimate publishers left advertisers questioning if their supply is working as hard as it should," Eusanio stated, adding, "Understanding that the biggest gains in value – and best alignment with brand values -  can be achieved from better supply curation, CASA has been engaging with six of the major SSPs to establish the capabilities needed to enable buyers to curate premium inventory at scale."

A third set of proposed standards were issued for retail media (see below), which OMG Chief Activation Officer Megan Pagliuca stated were designed to deal with how upper-funnel channels "like CTV can contribute to sales in meaningful ways."

OMG said a fourth set of standards have been issued for CTV (see below) and that the council currently is "engaging with the seven streaming networks and six OEMs/devices that represent 90% of all CTV bought programmatically,  all of which are now fully enabled against at least one pillar,  and agreed in principle/road mapped for at least two more."