IAB Presents Standards on RIA, Game Ad State of the Union

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The Interactive Advertising Bureau yesterday released final guidelines on ad impression measurement in rich Internet applications (RIA) and a status report on interactive advertising in video and Web-based games. This is the first outward communication from the organization's Games Committee.

Rich Internet applications have been a challenge to measure, so the the IAB's measurement guidelines start with the basics by defining at what point an ad impression is counted in RIA environments. Documentation covers environments built using technologies like AJAX (define), JSON (define) and Microsoft Silverlight (define).

"There hasn't been a standard against how [RIA impressions] are being counted,” said Sheryl Draizen, SVP and GM of the IAB. “We want to make sure all sites are counting impressions the same way against the guidelines."

This update to RIA measurement is a supplement to the Ad Campaign Measurement and Audit Guidelines stated in 2004, and the group’s broadband video ad standards outlined last year. Agencies such as Avenue A/Razorfish have already begun tracking RIA impressions for clients.

The RIA guidelines came out simultaneously with "The Video Game Interactive Advertising Platform Status Report" released by the IAB's Games Committee. The report offers a snapshot of the video game industry and defines adopted terminology, practices, and standards. Guidelines including what constitutes an impression will come later.

"What we tried to do with the platform status report is give a state of the union on in-game advertising, identifying opportunities that exist for advertisers, and how they can leverage the gaming platform in a way that gets consumers engaged," said Draizen.

On the Games Committee's radar are video games, computer games and Web-based casual games. "Anything interactive in nature is addressed in the gaming report," Draizen said. "The next step is to identify what are the pieces in the industry that need to be addressed to help move the industry forward."

While the IAB established a baseline for advertising opportunities in games, the channel continues to evolve. Just yesterday IGA Worldwide, an in-game ad network that typically targets triple-A titles, made a deal with games publisher Merscom to insert ads into casual games. IGA is an IAB Games Committee member.