The IAB UK Gold Standard - where we are and where we’re going

Just as a quick reminder the IAB Gold Standard commits businesses to doing three things:
 
1) Reducing ad fraud by implementing ads.txt
2) Improving digital advertising experiences by adhering the Coalition for Better Ads principles and not using the 12 ‘bad’ ads
3) Increasing brand safety by working with JICWEBS with a view to becoming certified or maintaining certification 
 
Prior to Engage the only members that we’d spoken to about it were the IAB Board. We took this approach because we wanted to keep momentum and felt that concentrating on a small group of members, rather than talking to all 350 paying members, would enable us to do this. The IAB Board, by definition, are also some of the most significant digital businesses in the UK and as Board members help shape the strategy and direction of the IAB, so it made good sense to start with them. 
 
All 24 companies from the Board have signed up to commit to IAB Gold Standard. As of 18 October, we opened the initiative up to all IAB members and we’ve had lots of enquiries already if you’re interested in getting involved then please email [email protected] and we’ll get back to you with next steps.



We’ve had some questions about what signing up to the Gold Standard means for the buy-side (agencies and advertisers)  If you’re dealing with a media owner, publisher or ad tech company who isn’t yet signed up the IAB Gold Standard, don’t worry – it’s likely that they’re already in touch with us and in the process of signing up.  

Over the coming weeks we’ll provide more detail about what happens next and answer some important questions such as what are the timelines around adhering to the principles within the IAB Gold Standard, how can buy-side companies get more involved and what happens if non-IAB members want to sign up.

The way that we’re going to answer these questions is collectively and collaboratively as an industry with the IAB UK taking a lead. We’ve established a sub-group of IAB Board members that is going to provide more detail around next steps, for example group might decide that IAB Gold Standard media owners have to implement ads.txt by the end of 2017 in order to adhere to the standard and then agree deadlines for the other actions. The group will also agree issues such as how ad tech businesses can support ads.txt as obviously they won’t have sites to implement them on, but can still play a vital role in fighting the ad fraud that ads.txt combats. 
 
We hope that you’re as excited as us about what the IAB Gold Standard means for digital advertising in the UK.  The launch of it this week should be seen as the start of the journey, rather than the end and more details will be available in the coming weeks.
 
Please email [email protected] if you have any questions.