Ushering in a New Era of Content and Data-Driven Advertising
Throughout its 20-year history, the IAB has been working with brands, agencies, publishers, and ad tech vendors to continue to innovate ad standards. Together, they have introduced new ad formats and standards that have allowed marketers and their agencies to continue to work to engage consumers. The industry, however, has been evolving so fast that the notion of an “ad format” as being a fixed container or size has quickly become a thing of the past. Concurrent with this, many brands are recognizing that content, context and data-driven marketing is a great way to keep consumers engaged—especially if using data—such content could be personalized to a user based on their interests, demographics, etc.
As a result, the IAB saw the need for a standard that would essentially increase the fluidity of ad formats and in general allow for more of a content driven model where an ad simply becomes a rendering of several pieces of content e.g. an image, a line of copy, an animation, etc. It was clear that the time was ripe for a standard that described, not an ad format, but the content that would ultimately form an ad.