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Loading ...An important step was taken this year in China’s Internet advertising market….. that is the move by The Internet Committee of the China Advertising Association to trial a version of the Recommended Usage Standard for China’s Internet Advertising.
As reported by China Tech News, this is the first time for the committee to launch such a standard for China’s Internet advertising industry. China’s current Internet advertising forms are too diversified and the sizes for currently-used Internet advertisements number more than 170,000, which brings great difficulties to the popularization and development of Internet advertising. Therefore, the committee has implemented a selection of sizes, technical standards and capacities, which are currently used in Internet advertising around the world and the committee initially selected 199 kinds of often used standards to form the Recommended Usage Standard.
After one year’s trial operation, the committee will amend the standard to form an official usage standard for China’s Internet advertising industry; and in the following three years, the standard is expected to raise the technical quality and standardization level of China’s Internet advertising industry. This goal is not dissimilar to those set down by The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) but it is not clear to me at this stage if their has been any consultation between these organizations in formulating the Chinese Usage Standards.
I have reached out to P.D who is launching the IAB in China for his views but have not heard back at this time… I will update this post once I hear back from Paul. In any event, I for one, look forward to having Usage Standards for advertising on Publishers… Call me cynical but it is the adoption not the formulation that may prove challenging.
Dr. Mathew McDougall, Group CEO of the Beijing-based SinoTech Group, posted an article on the new advertising standards announced by the Internet Interactive Advertising Committee of China (IIACC) last week. In the article, I was mentioned by my initials, and was asked for my feedback, since IAB in the US, and in some other countries, is known for its published ad standards and specifications. Since I have been involved on the ground in getting feedback from companies, and lately from the Chinese government, on how we can cooperate, I asked Mathew if he would publish an article to explain our position. He very generously agreed to do so.
While IAB standards and specifications are well-known globally, it is by no means the only issue all the country IABs are best known for. As part of my fact-gathering exercise in China, I have tried to understand what companies need in order for the Chinese market to grow. Measurements and specifications are one of those areas. For this reason, we welcome the effort by IIACC to create standards and measurements for Internet ads, and look forward to contributing to the effort. In particular, I applaud IIACC’s effort to introduce a trial period for these specifications. Over the years, the various country IABs have learned that in order for ad standards to become widely adopted:
– There must be a clear mechanism for feedback from all parties, so that everyone can comment on what works and what does not work and why;
– Issues must be separated into small-, medium- and large-sized issues, with task forces, committees and councils to tackle these issues, and to make recommendations to the whole group for eventual adoption;
– All parties need to understand that the Internet is a young and evolving medium, and need to recognize this reality. Even after they are announced, they are likely to change simply because the market changes.
Last week, the president of IAB EU, Mr. Alain Heureux, came to Beijing, and we had the opportunity to meet with the secretary general of IIACC, Mr. Chen Yong. Our main focus is to start with an AdEx survey covering China. All country IABs issue an AdEx survey, which covers advertising expenditure flowing from advertisers, to ad agencies and then to online media companies. Our research partner for this effort is Pricewaterhouse Coopers. This survey uses a common set of questions globally, and provides advertisers with a baseline to measure adspend trends and growth in different country markets. Since China now has the largest number of Internet users internationally, we would like to fill this knowledge gap.
During the course of our meeting we asked Mr. Chen Yong for his support, and he informed us that he would try to be of assistance. We look forward to working together with him.
Following on this, we would like to serve as a digital embassy for companies who want to go out from the China market, and companies which want to enter the Chinese market. Other areas we want to focus efforts on are training, to help address the shortage of qualified online marketers, managers, and other issues.
To sum up, we feel that digital marketing is a field which will continue to grow, even in the very challenging economic environment we now live in. Our industry is a young industry, and we need to focus on growing the pie, since there is plenty of work to go around for all of us. We look forward to working with IIACC as they iterate their standards, and look forward to building constructive relationships with all parties involved.
If you would like to learn more about IAB and how you can help, you can contact me here.
Hi, I totally agree with you that advertising in China has started playing a very important role. IMO new companies are soon to be more and more popular..