A panel session, “Project Reinvention: Now Is the time for Action," at the AAAAs Media Conference this week in New Orleans included The Interactive Task Force, made up of members from the IAB and AAAAs. The group looked at who should own and have access to performance data generated from online campaigns. GroupM CEO Irwin Gotlieb wanted to make sure ad campaign data is the property of the agency and client. The Interactive Task Force also included Randall Rothenberg, CEO, Interactive Advertising Bureau, Universal McCann executive David Cohen and CBS Interactive’s Zack Rogers.
Rothenberg said there may end up being a nasty battle over data ownership, but the two sides have a mutual interest and some common goals. He warned online publishers and agencies that [federal regulators at the FTC] are watching and are looking for the industry to protect privacy rights in interactive media. He urged industry members to creating an effective and meaningful self-regulatory practice. Recently, The AAAAs, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), the IAB and The Council of Better Business Bureaus (BBB) joined forces to quell government regulation of online advertising. They’re hoping to convince the FTC they can police themselves and head off efforts to regulate behavioral targeting, an issue gaining steam in Congress. The groups announced that they are working together to develop enhanced self-regulatory principles for online behavioral advertising in order to address privacy concerns and to increase consumers’ trust and confidence in how online information is gathered and used.
The interactive task force also recommended standard forms for RFPs, insertion orders and invoices to be placed within an e-business format. A beta development process is already using them via vendors including DoubleClick, Mediabank and Harris.
The broader session also discussed recommendations made by the Local Broadcast Task Force, made up of Starcom’s Kevin Gallagher and Hearst-Argyle’s Kathleen Keefe, TVB EVP Abby Auerbach, Kathy Crawford of Group M, and Mark Lund of NBC Universal. That task force laid out recommendations for the local broadcast TV arena that included moving away from the GRP metric used in local broadcast buying to the CPM viewer model used by national TV. This would jump start cross-platform deals because of the buys being on the same measurement page, so to speak. Buyers could also better compare the value of a spot buy with other media.
TVB President Chris Rohrs, also on the panel, noted that recommendations such as changing the currency and looking for stations to halt preemptions if they can sell inventory for higher rates are worthwhile and important advances, but they cannot succeed without a robust e-business solution, such as the TVB’s ePort system.
