The AAC met on June 9th for the sixth time since its inception in 2017. The AAC typically meets in New York — and yet due to health considerations and travel restrictions around Covid-19, we held the meeting fully remote.

The impact of Covid-19 on the online advertising ecosystem

In April, we held a virtual meeting with the Representatives and Members of the AAC. The developments in the world surrounding Covid-19 and its fundamental impact on the online advertising industry and monetization of content online naturally dictated this interaction. Publishers that were attending the call shared some dire stories on how revenue streams evaporated overnight, and vendors painted scenarios where they were seeing 30% drops in CPMs. Marketers, on the other hand, were having big issues crafting messages and campaigns that were not offensive during the raging pandemic, which proved to have a big impact on their budgets. Finally, we learned that keyword blocking and other brand safety measures had negatively impacted publishers in a number of cases. Covid-19 poses an existential threat to the digital advertising ecosystem, but at a bare minimum will cause a paradigm shift.

The next weeks and months will teach us all a lot about where the industry is going and how content can be monetized with decreasing ad budgets.

Outlook on how to further develop the Acceptable Ads Standard

Zooming back in on the most recent meeting of last Tuesday, the conversation focused around the last bits and pieces of the second video ads study. The second video ads study is expected to be completed in July or August. The AAC will then reconvene to discuss the findings and vote on its potential impact on changing the Acceptable Ads Standard.

Because the video ads study project is approaching its climax, the AAC already started calling for new research ideas. Some of those ideas included testing ad formats, implementation questions, and others. All stakeholders of the AAC will provide ideas in the following weeks, which then will be prioritized and executed.

The user coalition of the AAC also made clear it would be helpful for their mission to collect ideas from ad-blocking users. Therefore, if you are an ad-blocking user, and you have ideas on how to improve the Acceptable Ads Standard, please join the conversation here.

The Committee also introduced completely new branding for its visual assets, and it will start developing a new website dedicated to all things AAC. More to come soon.

The Acceptable Ads Committee is committed to keeping a pulse on all global developments and its impact on the online advertising supply chain and the end users’ experience of the Acceptable Ads Standard.

We wish all our members, stakeholders, and followers all the best in these economically, physically and socially pressing times.