IAB Canada Councils & Committees 2015 in Review – Powerful Digital Leadership

The following is an overview of the important conversations that took place on the ground in our councils and committees as well as a sneak peek into 2016. If you are interested in participating in one or more of these committees please contact Melanie Pavao mpavao@iabcanada.com . We would like to thank all of the committee and council chairs as well as members. Your passion continues to drive the industry forward.

Agency Council

2015 in Review

  • Workflow was discussed in great length. The issue of insertion orders and billing reconciliation continued to cut into agency efficiencies this year and there was a concerted push to get publishers and agencies to use proper coding to help alleviate time spent on administration. Onus was placed on the technology solutions providers and with continued movement towards programmatic, we anticipate this issue improving significantly in 2016
  • Viewability – adopting the IAB global definition and approach to moving towards 100% in 2017. It was established that viewability is in fact becoming a transactional currency and this year we saw great progress from research providers covering off this critical area.
  • Fraud – discussions on TAG and plans to socialize best practices
  • The end of Flash and the adoption of HTML5 became a major topic of discussion that required training and socializing.

 

Looking Forward 2016

  • Spotlight on Privacy and Regulatory affairs as OPC and CRTC bring enforcement into effect
  • Ad Blocking – getting a handle on the impact and developing effective industry policies
  • Advertising data ownership – especially in mobile.

 

Publisher Council

2015 in Review

  • Viewability
    • Socialized and agreed to the IAB global definition
    • Reviewed various measurement providers and how to deal with the potential for discrepancies
    • Discussed framework and timing to accept vCRM as a currency
  • Digital Work Flow Process
    • Worked with agency council and agency CFOs to understand costs of current workflow resource requirements and identified immediate efficiencies
    • Inclusion of billing code in billing process was established as a standard practice and included in T’s and C’s
    • Investigation into other workflow automation tools. Not an easy fix.
  • Demonstrating the value of digital campaigns in building brand
  • How to change the conversations from clicks to other more informative metrics
  • How to efficiently measure brand impact across digital and other platforms
  • Engaged research group to look at industry wide surveys – conduct another CMOST
  • Fraud
    • Discussed at length
    • Supported IAB initiatives (TAG) to build awareness and ensure best practices to combat
  • Privacy and Self-Regulation
    • Ensured common understanding of the issue
    • Regular communication on Publisher participation and compliance with youradchoices.ca initiative

 

Looking Forward 2016 – Continuation of the above

Policy & Regulatory Affairs Committee

2015 in Review

  • Privacy regulatory authority guidance, decisions and research on online behavioural advertising and other digital advertising activities
  • New privacy law security breach notification requirements
  • Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) anti-spam legislation enforcement activity

 

Looking Forward 2016

  • These three issues will also be the key focus of the privacy and regulatory affairs committee in 2016.

 

Programmatic Trading Committee

2015 in Review

  • Reaching out to marketers and getting an on-the-ground read on the issues and barriers to programmatic
  • IVT (Invalid Traffic) – best practices for publishers to eliminate non-human traffic
  • Transparency – defining it, communicating it and discussions on best practices
  • Organizational challenges – widely spread organizational issues that were affecting the growth/adoption of programmatic
  • Inter-committee collaboration within IAB Canada and abroad
  • Education – evolution of the programmatic course curriculum
  • Addressing fraud and viewability as it relates to the programmatic ecosystem – working with IAB Canada and globally on proposals for position papers on the measurement of each in the Canadian ecosystem.

 

Looking Forward 2016

  • Participation in Activation Committees and creating smaller task forces to push outputs like policies, best practices and white papers.
  • Continued focus on addressing fraud and viewability as it relates to the programmatic ecosystem
  • Organizational implications of business models in the ecosystem – comparing the difference between the three models of advertiser, agency-, and vendor-led models.

 

Ad Ops Committee

2015 in Review

  • Ad specs updates for new sizes and formats
  • Managing Flash depreciation
  • HTML5 adoption – organized webinars
  • Campaign optimization and setup best practices
  • Tactics to minimize Ad fraud
  • Reviewed VAST 4.0 discussing implications and provided feedback for public commentary

 

Looking Forward 2016

  • Update ad specs
  • HTML5 file size management
  • LEAN ads program adoption
  • Trustworthy Accountability Group Payment ID implementation
  • Evolving our career path into RTB
  • IAB courses and education contributions

 

Mobile Committee

2015 in Review

  • HTML5 and the changing ad standards for digital – including Mobile (Canada pioneered the HTML5 standard which has been adapted and updated by the U.S)
  • Multiplatform effectiveness Study scheduled to go in field in 2016 – ensuring that Mobile is part of the mix and determining the approach
  • Revenue Survey and the role of Mobile with all its opportunities like In-App, Video etc. being captured in the Survey

 

Looking Forward 2016

  • Mobile Payments & M-commerce impact on marketing
  • Beacon technology/implications
  • Data Management

 

 Emerging Platforms Committee

2015 in Review

  • The impact of Internet of Things (IOT) on the digital advertising landscape in Canada – The role of beacons and other new emerging opportunities for the Canadian Industry
    • Are connected Cars a new marketing opportunity
  • Newspapers re-invented – The Newspapers of the future, looking at what La Presse and the Toronto Star are doing in Canada

 

Looking Forward 2016

  • Virtual Reality

 

Search Committee

2015 in Review

  • Organic Search across Paid/Owned/Earned Channels – search isn’t influenced purely by technical SEO, but spans a broader range of digital marketing tactics including Social and Content
  • Reviewed both the Paid and Organic courses offered by IAB Canada to update the material and ensure the topics covered were relevant
  • Provided a platform for the search engines to interact directly with agencies and advertisers.

 

Looking Forward 2016

  • Improving the advertiser-search engine relationship – bring more direct advertisers on board
  • Integration – open dialogue with other committees to hold joint sessions to get a broader perspective across channels

 

Video Committee

2015 in Review

  • Viewabiilty
  • Programmatic Video – PMP’s or Open Exchange
  • VAST 4.0 Global Ad Standards released by IAB – reviewed and provided commentary to Tech Lab

 

Looking Forward 2016

  • Video Content Creation – What are the costs and is it effective
  • How does Programmatic TV change the Video landscape
  • How do you measure Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) for Video views

 

Research Committee

2015 in Review

  • 2015/2016 – Task Force to select supplier, commission original cross-platform campaign research to study Mobile’s contribution
  • Shaping the CMUST 2015 study in collaboration with Rob Young
  • Executed the 360 (Yr-2) 2015 Agency Satisfaction Survey: 13 member co-sponsors
  • Socializing the industry’s leading studies from across the globe – from ad blocking to mobile usage, cross media studies and more

 

Looking Forward 2016

  • More sponsored research studies – cross device, programmatic, ad blocking etc
  • Major innovation in CMUST 2016 Report
  • Enhanced revenue survey
  • Continued enhancements to existing studies
  • Workshops on data to insights

 

Social Committee

2015 in Review

  • Social ROI – planning for success on client business objectives using social media
  • Best platforms – inviting vendors to discuss capabilities, strengths and upcoming enhancements to ensure we’re all in the know
  • Measurability – how do we accurately measure success? What do benchmarks really look like?

 

Looking Forward 2016

  • Holistic Planning – leveraging multiple platforms for different messaging strategies, all part of the purchase funnel
  • Video – When? How? Best practices? This will be even bigger in 2016 with Facebook now planning against TRPs to combat TV GRPs