DPAA Unveils Standard Ad Unit Guidelines
Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
New York-based Digital Place-based Advertising Association has unveiled its DPAA Standard Advertising Units guidelines document.
The guidelines describe a DPAA Standard Ad Unit as a consistent format for delivery of advertising creative that networks can easily accept for playback on the majority of Digital Place-based networks. The document also introduces a common nomenclature that advertisers, agencies and networks can use to ensure consistency and clarity in creative and operations documents.
“DPAA’s purpose of the SAU initiative is to help advertisers and agencies understand how simple it is to execute multi-network Digital Place-based campaigns, while reducing cost and increasing the efficiencies associated with multi-network Digital Place-based buys,” says Susan Danaher, DPAA president. “This is a pivotal moment in the Digital Place-based media space, as we evolve from a nascent industry to one with real scale and reach for advertisers.”
Work on the guidelines was a result of a collaborative effort between the DPAA’s Creative Standards Committee and reviewed by the DPAA’s Media Operations Committee; the Research and Standards Committee; and DPAA’s Agency Advisory Board.
Danaher says, “The document was circulated widely among Digital Place-based networks and available on the website as a draft for input and it received several rounds of input from members as well as non-members. It has been extremely well vetted.”
Each network will be able to run the Standard Ad Unit ‘as is’ or, if necessary, a network can ‘Down-Convert’ to optimize quality playback across its network. It is up to each network to convert the file, if necessary, to perform at optimum quality across a given network.
“We created this document to address a misconception within the advertising community that it is difficult to execute creative for the Digital Place-based medium,” says Dan Levi, Zoom Media & Marketing senior vice-president and the Chair of DPAA’s Creative Guidelines and Standards Committee. ”The reality is that producing creative for Digital Place-based networks is quite simple, and these guidelines will eliminate this misconception by establishing a prescribed standard video ad format that all networks will accept.
“We have already begun working with DPAA member networks to ensure widespread adoption of SAU’s across the digital place-based media industry.”
Alan Schulman, CEO of Udig, The Digital Innovations Group, and one of the driving forces behind this initiative, says, “We are now seeing the significant scaling of screens and new networks, as well as both interactive and 3D creative possibilities, so it’s only natural that the creative community needs standard specs like aspect ratios and encoding standards to make it really simple to deploy. This move makes it a lot easier than last minute re-purposing of existing creative assets. This is similar to what the Interactive advertising Bureau did a decade ago to help standardize and grow their business.”
More information about the DPAA Standard Advertising Units can be found on the DPAA website.
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