SITES SLOW TO COMPLY WITH NEW AD STANDARDS

By: Sarah J. Heim But Experimentation With Larger Ads Continues


(Adweek IQ) Not
surprisingly, adoption of the Internet Advertising Bureau's (IAB) new online ad
units across the Internet hasn't happened en masse yet. A Jupiter Media Metrix
report released Monday found that while 25% of ad-supported Web sites have
experimented with larger online banner sizes, less than 5% of these sites run
ads that exactly comply with the new IAB standards.

The study showed an increase in the number of ads matching the IAB standards,
which were announced on Feb. 26, but those numbers weren't enough to make a dent
in the overall market, according to Charlie Buchwalter, vice president of media
research at AdRelevance, a Jupiter Media Metrix company.

These findings do not undermine the work the IAB has been doing, Buchwalter
noted. "The industry is moving in the right direction," he said. "The ad
standards will inevitably make it easier for advertisers to approach the
Internet in a cost-effective way."

Buchwalter acknowledged that it will take some time for many sites to re-code to
accommodate the larger ad formats.

Although it hasn't yet been proven that bigger is necessarily better, the new ad
sizes represent innovation and change that's important, Buchwalter said. Whether
the new sizes currently being used on sites perfectly adhere to the IAB's
standards, the fact remains that almost any implementation of different units
can be seen as positive.

According to AdRelevance data, gaming site Flipside.com led all Web sites in
complying with the new standards, hosting more than 30 million impressions for
ads matching the IAB specifications. This accounts for 10% of their total
advertising revenue. The Street.com placed second with 6 million impressions.

Corbis purchased the most IAB-specified large ad formats, with almost 5 million
impressions during February, and three online casino sites were among the top
five IAB ad format advertisers.



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