interactive advertising bureau

Ad group blasts cookie-privacy project from Mozilla, Stanford

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, a group that represents hundreds of Internet advertisers, has attacked Mozilla's involvement in a Stanford Law School privacy project to judge whether individual Web sites can be trusted to set behavior-tracking browser cookies.

The IAB doesn't like the Cookie Clearninghouse, which Stanford's Center for Internet and Society and Mozilla announced on June 19. The project aims to rate individual to bring privacy ratings for browser cookies -- the small text files that Web site operators can store on people's computers. Cookies can be useful for remembering that you're logged into a … Read more

Ad group: New Firefox cookie plan will boost spam

The Interactive Advertising Bureau ratcheted up its pressure on Mozilla's Firefox to reconsider its decision to block third-party advertising cookies by default.

The trade group, whose senior vice president tweeted last month that the policy was a "nuclear first strike against the ad industry," put out a statement from its president and CEO, Randall Rothenberg, detailing its concerns. He painted a bleak picture of the future of the Internet, saying that a vast array of Web sites would be shut down by the proposed change.

"If Mozilla follows through on its plan to block all third-party … Read more

Lawmakers ask advertisers for Web-piracy crackdown

A group of Congress members has asked advertisers to start doing more to fight online piracy.

According to a subscription-only post on the Politico blog, the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus has written letters to three of the large advertising associations to ask that they choke off revenue to sites suspected of illegally distributing copyrighted materials.

Members of the Anti-Piracy Caucus include Reps. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). Washington lawmakers have begun targeting the revenue of sites that allegedly distribute intellectual property, such as unauthorized copies of songs, movies, … Read more

White House wants to beef up Internet privacy laws

The Obama administration wants better Internet privacy protection and is looking for new laws and a new government office to help in that effort, according to an article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal.

Citing people familiar with the situation, the Journal says the White House had asked the Commerce Department to create a report with recommendations on enacting new laws concerning Internet privacy. Currently in draft form, the final report is due to come out in a few weeks.

A special task force headed by Cameron Kerry, brother of Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, has also been formed to help … Read more

Google: We're too sexy for your search

NEW YORK--In the future, run-of-the-mill search ads just won't cut it at Google.

Representatives from Google's display advertising team made a slick pitch to Madison Avenue this afternoon at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's annual MIXX conference, insisting that the short- and long-term strategy at the Mountain View, Calif., powerhouse will be to make display ads as crucial to its business as the search advertisements that propelled it to billion-dollar revenues.

Display advertising is "really front and center" to Google's current product strategy, Vice President of Product Management Neal Mohan explained to the audience, taking … Read more

IAB: Internet ads actually doing OK

Nobody's surprised: Internet-advertising revenues fell slightly in the first half of 2009, according to numbers released Monday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The trade group found that online-ad revenues dropped 5.3 percent to $10.9 billion year over year, representing a total loss of $610 million. That's an understandable loss, given how much the media business has had the wind knocked out of it, thanks to the recession. But the slide in digital advertising isn't nearly as dire, when compared to the overall ad industry, which fell 15.4 percent.

The IAB also brought … Read more

Ad industry groups agree to privacy guidelines

A coalition of advertising industry trade groups have agreed on new guidelines for privacy related to behavioral targeting on the Web. Officially released on Thursday and expected to go into effect early next year, the set of principles concern what advertisers can do with personal data collected in order to zero in on target audiences.

The groups involved are the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A's), the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

The guidelines take the form of seven principles, ranging from a commitment to better consumer education … Read more

Online advertising up 11 percent from last year

The growing economic slump doesn't appear to have fully struck Web advertising.

Internet advertising revenues for the third quarter were nearly $5.9 billion, representing an 11 percent increase over the same period last year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

The bad news is online advertising appears to be slowing down. The third quarter in 2008 was up only two percent from the second quarter. For the first three quarters of the year, however, ad revenues totaled $17.3 billion, up from $15.2 billion for the first three quarters of 2007. The IAB said the $5.9 … Read more

Exec: Ad industry must think small to tap social sites

NEW YORK--"Social media is killing Internet advertising," said Seth Goldstein, co-founder and CEO of SocialMedia Networks, as a roomful of ad-industry types at midtown Manhattan's Roosevelt Hotel put down their BlackBerrys and pulled out their pens and notebooks.

They were eager to hear Goldstein, whose keynote kicked off Monday's User-Generated Content and Social Media conference organized by the Interactive Advertising Bureau's IAB Leadership Forum. That's because nobody in the ad industry has figured out how to turn the social-networking craze into a real moneymaker. Silicon Valley-based SocialMedia, an ad network that touts itself … Read more