The third meeting of the AAC help in New York on October 8th set a new tone. Dubbed “the most lively and productive since inception of AAC,” there was palpable excitement for the next measurement project: video ads.
The AAC’s mandate is to create standards for advertisements that ad block users will deem acceptable and that also bring value to the publishers who create the content we all enjoy.
We discussed the continued growth of online video ads, and AAC has commissioned eyeo to conduct a study to learn more about how adblockers feel towards video ads. Online video ads often interrupt content; in-stream and out-stream video ads have made significant growth in the past few years and in-banner videos are still prevalent with auto-sound and auto-play prevalent among many publishers. AAC is looking to find the non-intrusive and acceptable video ads among the adblocker community and identifying use cases of these acceptable video ads. AAC is currently looking for volunteers from ad tech and publisher groups to be a part of the Video Ads Research Subcommittee.
There was a detailed discussion around browser fingerprint blocking with a follow-up to discuss this in greater detail; including the technical feasibility of blocking and making this a requirement of the Acceptable Ads Standard (AAS). Eyeo is drafting an implementation guide to provide more information how they are enforcing AAS in various ‘edge-case’ scenarios, and exploring the need for more explicit criteria.
There are exciting opportunities on the horizon! The AAC will be adding additional ad block user representatives in the coming months. Keep an eye out for more updates from the committee if you’re interested in joining.
Thanks to Paul-Olivier Dehaye.