IASH ANNOUNCES PLANS FOR CENTRALISED SITE VETTING

Internet Advertising Sales Houses (IASH) – the official sales house council of the IAB – has announced plans for independent centralised site vetting in 2009, to provide further transparency for advertisers and agencies.  As one of the Council’s main objectives for this year, the move will provide even greater reassurance for brands that they will not be inappropriately placed online.

IASH has been in talks with a number of key industry bodies to educate them about the ad network model, and respond to calls for further developments to the audit process. Up until now, each individual IASH members has been responsible for vetting each of the sites in their networks, which proved to be the easiest and quickest way to launch the IASH process.  The Council is now achieving its long term goal to engage an independent third party for site vetting, now members are confident that the code and regulations are clear and well understood.

The Council has invited a number of independent vetting companies to pitch for the business, in order to draw up a shortlist of prospective partners.  The aim is for the successful provider to set up a database specifically to classify sites according to IASH specified classes of inventory, with the ability to cross-reference IASH site classifications with their content categories to allow the user to more easily classify content by genre.  A dedicated database would then be set-up to run in parallel with the existing provider database, in accordance with IASH Site Vetting process needs.

A final decision will be made after the next round of ABCe audits have been ratified and announced at the end of April. 

Richard Sharp, chair of IASH said: “Centralised site vetting was always one of our main goals for 2009.  Whilst we have not identified any real issue at the moment, it is essential that IASH works together proactively to ensure that the needs of the wider industry are met, and that the ad network model remains as transparent as possible.”