The IAB Global Network is made up of 42 international licensee organizations around the world. IAB Europe is a coalition of 27 national IABs across Europe, and over 500 companies. The IAB publishes Mediascope Europe annually, a media consumption research compilation based on over 50,000 consumer interviews. The IAB's organizational model includes four areas: IAB, IAB Education Foundation, IAB Technology Lab and Trustworthy Accountability Group. The Trustworthy Accountability Group is industry-owned whereas the rest are owned by IAB. Display ads are subject to standards established by the IAB.
History
Founded in 1996, the IAB is based in New York City. Randall Rothenberg is the Chief Executive Officer of the organization, Patrick Dolan is the President. It has developed a number of interface formats for digital advertising metadata, including the Video Ad Serving Template and Video Player-Ad Interface Definition formats. On February 26, 2012, IAB released IAB Standard Ad Unit Portfolio, that included detailed information on all display advertising formats. In June 2011, the IAB, in partnership with the ANA Association of National Advertisers and the 4A's American Association of Advertising Agencies released the Guiding Principles of Digital Measurement. These five principles became the foundation of "Making Measurement Make Sense" and created a basis for the advance of viewability metric. The collaboration between ANA, 4A's, and IAB also resulted in the creation of Trustworthy Accountability Group an initiative that includes members GroupM Interaction, AppNexus,, GumGum and OpenX. On May 31, 2012, IAB criticized Microsoft for enabling Do Not Track by default in Internet Explorer 10. One of the main criticisms of IAB's response is that tracking should be opt in, not opt out. On March 12, 2013, IAB launched a campaign against Mozilla for planning to turn on blocking of third party HTTP cookies in version 22 of Firefox. IAB felt this would have an adverse effect on small publishers who depend on ad networks for revenue, harming the diversity of content choices on the web. The campaign has received significant criticism from online privacy advocates. In January 2016, IAB did not allow the developers of Adblock Plus to attend their event, and refunded the money that Adblock Plus paid. The IAB did not disclose why they did not allow Adblock Plus to attend. In May 2016, Business Insider reported that the IAB leader had, in January, described Adblock Plus as an "unethical, immoral, mendacious coven of tech wannabes" and an "old-fashioned extortion racket." In June 2017, IAB finalized its specification for the initial version of an ads.txt standard for publishers to list authorized sellers. In November 2017, IAB Europe an open-standard technical framework intended to “enable websites, advertisers and their ad technology partners” to obtain, record and update consumer consent for their personal data to be processed in line with the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation. Technical and policy details of the framework were made available for public content in March 2018. In February 2020, IAB formed a industry-wide consortium under 'Project Rearc' to find a solution to third-party cookies being blocked.
