Guidelines & Best Practice

The IAB's Guide to Designing Digital Ad Impact Studies has been written to provide guidance on measuring digital advertising that will add confidence and precision to marketing investment decisions. 

After receiving feedback from the industry, we have updated the original Dec. 2018 edition of this handbook. The impact of Header Bidding has been hugely significant for both programmatic buyers and sellers, with adoption continuing to grow across publishers and ad formats. These levels of adoption will only increase as Header Bidding is now becoming increasingly prevalent within both in-app and video inventory. This update provides the market with a more in-depth look to Header Bidding, the resultant impacts and a guide to some of the nuances related to auction mechanics. 

The VAST (Video Ad Serving Template) 4.0 specification was released in January 2016, but hasn’t seen widespread adoption. Some recent updates point to an opportunity for successful pickup of the standard.

In this paper we lay out the reasons for this current state, and call on the industry to adopt the proposed changes.

Creative has always been a key part of traditional advertising, ensuring the message receives cut through in print, TV and radio advertisements. But the same can’t be said in the history of digital, with creative sometimes being secondary to reach, frequency and targeting. On this page we have rounded up all of our latest creative resources, designed to fully embrace digital advertising in all shapes, sizes and formats.

The Australian Digital Advertising Practices have been created specifically for advertisers in Australia to facilitate better relationships with agencies, publishers and digital platforms, and to foster shared responsibilities for digital ad spends and outcomes.

The IAB Australia Display Creative and Mobile Creative Guidelines have now been updated from the initial version released in October 2016 and more fully embrace HTML5 technology as the new standard for ad creatives.

These creative updates are the result of testing diverse HTML5 ad creatives for load performance and user experience to determine the optimum specifications for allowed file sizes and other HTML5 considerations. 

The podcasting advertising market in Australia has grown significantly since the IAB Australia Audio Council endorsed the first US IAB podcasting technical measurement guidelines in 2016. Nearly half of media agencies indicated that they have used podcasting for clients in the 2017 IAB Australia Audio Advertising State of the Nation study.

Page Views have been a key metric in digital ratings systems since the mid-1990s and have historically been an important volume indicator when comparing sites and publishers.

Update: The IAB Australia Podcasting Measurement Guidance and Local Market Update (July 2018) is now available to download

The IAB Australia Audio Council reviewed Version 2 of the IAB US IAB Podcast Measurement Technical Guidelines released in late December 2017, assessing suitability for endorsement in the Australian market. IAB Australia has since released the Podcasting Measurement Guidance and Local Market Update in July 2019.

Technology is essential to the proper functioning of digital advertising, but it is only a tool. It can’t single-handedly ensure effectiveness. To optimise your technology investments, your company must ask the right questions about the technology you are about to purchase. And in asking those questions, there is no template for today’s data-driven scenarios we are planning for, so transparency and knowledge sharing are a must. For that purpose, IAB Australia has created these guidelines.