Dear Stakeholders,

As we come to the end of 2008 it looks as if next year will present the advertising industry with serious challenges. However the results of a recent survey of our executive team showed that far from being gloomy about future growth, they saw opportunities for online advertising to prove itself and emerge stronger. Rest assured that the IAB Europe team will be working with you next year, supporting the industry and continuing to represent your interests, be it through public affairs, working groups, best practice, research or by providing networking opportunities at our numerous events.

In particular, representing the interests of the entire digital industry to the EU Commission, Parliament and NGOs through our Public Affairs initiative remains a key priority for us. I am very proud of our achievements for the digital industry – you can find out more if you read on.

We are excited to confirm that IAB Europe will operate in the mobile space and to announce in this newsletter our close collaboration with two leading mobile industry trade associations.

May I take this opportunity to wish you all a very enjoyable Christmas and New Year – I and the IAB Europe team look forward to working with you in 2009.

With best wishes,

We’re delighted to take this opportunity to announce that we have launched a working group on Mobile Marketing. This important workgroup, set up in response to suggestions from both our members and from the players in mobile advertising industry, will have the support and collaboration of the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) on standardisation and definitions and the GSMA (the GSM Association) on measurement. IAB Europe will provide benchmarking figures in the annual AdEx Report as well as working with the industry to educate the wider marketplace and promote mobile advertising in Europe as we do for the online advertising space.

For more information please contact Catherine Borrel.

Our other current projects include:
1. Display Advertising supported by AdMonsters to improve coordination between European and American standards
2. Search to investigate performance-based marketing techniques
3. Interact to ensure that the 2009 event on June 10-12 in Brussels is the best yet
4. The Mixx Awards to organise the first pan-European event at Interact
5. The AdEx Europe benchmark report to include more countries and more formats
6. Dive to provide the industry with an overview calendar for all national and European events, trade shows and awards developed in collaboration with Dmex, the 2009 Köln based trade show for our industry.
 

Those of you involved in audience measurement will be familiar with the Measurement of Interactive Audience (MIA) Project.

Last month the MIA Project launched a global survey for users of audience measurement data, to gather views and opinions across the online media industry, including advertisers and publishers through to networks and trade associations. To date we have achieved 460 responses to the questionnaire from over 35 countries across the globe. The survey will show what the industry is using as preferred metrics, satisfaction levels and future direction for measurement. This insight will become the foundation for industry standards and guidelines that will help to improve the consistency and overall accountability of the planning criteria of interactive advertising.

We still need your support for the MIA Project Survey. The survey will be open for another month, and in that time we’d like to boost responses in all territories. The survey can be viewed on the MIA Project website - www.MIAProject.org . Please forward the link to any colleagues with relevant audience measurement experience. We are still looking for larger numbers of responses in a few key countries specifically Japan, Korea, Sweden and the Netherlands. If you have any contacts in any of these territories please support this important initiative by forwarding them the link above, or contacting Catherine Borrel to introduce the project to your contacts.

IAB Europe’s Profiling and Targeting Working Group has been compiling an introductory document explaining targeted advertising on the internet. This document has been produced for the benefit of the general public as well as European legislators. We expect to be able to release the contents of this document by Christmas.

This is the first phase of the group’s outputs, with work on supplying more information about the industry, and a framework for good practice in online targeting expected to be started in January. For more information about the activities of this working group, including details of how to join, please contact Catherine Borrel .

As the EU’s new rules on e-privacy continue to be scrutinized by all three of the EU’s main institutions, the crucial question of whether or not IP addresses should be treated as personal data remains a pressing issue. IAB Europe's Public Affairs team has been very active on your behalf, meeting and talking to the permanent representatives of the Member States, Commission officials and cabinet members in the run up to the all important second reading.

As always, our team has been keeping track of a wide range of issues and discussions in Brussels affecting digital advertising and advertisers and we are pleased to send you our round-up from the first couple of weeks of December. Click here to view.

Meanwhile in the UK, self-regulation seems to be working well in the digital media: according to the first report on internet advertising by the British ads regulator, the Advertising Standards Authority has found that 97% of digital ads complied with the non-broadcast advertising code. For the report click here.

Email your queries to: publicaffairs@iabeurope.eu

EURid is the organisation appointed by the European Commission as the registry for the .eu domain name. Over the forthcoming months IAB Europe will be working with EURid in helping to promote the .eu domain to companies to show that they are open for business across Europe. To find out how a broad range of companies have used the .eu domain name to their advantage, click here

Thanks to the support of our member InSites Consulting, we carried out a short survey of the representatives of the 23 National IABs and 12 corporate members in November. Rather than being worried about declining market size, our members see the economic downturn as an opportunity for online advertising to prove itself. They are totally committed to online advertising and believe that the Internet is the ideal ‘total media’ solution for difficult economic times – allowing for PR, branding and marketing in a highly targeted way, combining creativity with opportunities for customer engagement. 

Respondents said that the more creative the campaign, the greater the emotional response from the viewer and therefore the better the results. Respondents also underline the value of integrated campaigns and expect that social media will grow in importance. 

A key challenge for the coming year will be to prove the effectiveness of online as a medium that really works. An industry standard measurement of ROI continues to evade online advertising and this is something that IAB Europe and the EIAA joint initiative, The Measurement of Interactive Audience (MIA) is working to address.  

Alain Heureux, President, presented the full results at November’s Research Showcase in London on November 17th. The full presentation is on IAB Europe’s online Knowledge Bank. Click here 

Since launching our new website in October we’ve had a very encouraging response to the Knowledge Bank, our online source of research and analysis on the European advertising and related markets from some of the leading research providers.  We are currently in the progress of uploading research material to the site – you can see how it looks at present here.

You’ll need a password to access some of the presentations and these are only available to members. For a password, please contact Steve Miller. If you have a research report you’d like to be included, please do email us a brief description at content@iabeurope.eu.

Our network of 23 national IABs has organised some great events in the final quarter of 2008, including a trade show in Germany with 15,000 delegates, a congress in Italy with 3500 attendees and an awards ceremony in Brussels for over 750 people.

As the voice of your industry we work tirelessly to organise events to address the five elements of our mission: education, promotion, regulation, information and networking. We also partner with reputable conference organisers to raise awareness of IAB Europe's mission, and our members benefit through discounts to these events.

The next Research Showcase will be held in Brussels on the 16th March 2009, and will focus on the area of Mobile Advertising. Similar to the event held in London in November, the Showcase will comprise of research from leading companies in the mobile sector, and delegates are invited to bring along their own research to share with others. The key outputs will be uploaded to the IAB Europe Knowledge Bank. For more information about this event or to put forward an idea to present, please contact Steve Miller.

The dmexco - digital marketing exposition & conference - opens its doors for the first time from September 23rd-24th 2009 in the Cologne Exhibition Centre. Exhibitors will include market leading companies from the online, performance, mobile, affiliate, e-mail, creativity and marketing sectors. IAB Europe are key partners for this event, and will be offering its Corporate Members many activities, workshops and visibility at the dmexco. Though based in Germany, dmexco promises to be a truly pan-European event, and the organising team will be working with IAB Europe to encourage all our members and stakeholders across Europe to attend. Further information is available at www.dmexco.de

The third edition of our pan-European congress will take place in Brussels in June 2009. The 10th and 11th June will be dedicated to the internal meetings and outputs from the IAB network, including Europe's turn to host the IAB Europe Global Summit. The public part of the Interact Congress will commence on the evening of the 11th, with the inaugural Mixx Europe Awards, with the main congress taking place throughout Friday 12th June. If you are interested in sponsorship opportunities for the Interact Congress or Mixx Europe Awards, contact IAB Europe's Membership Manager, Steve Miller.

IAB Europe members can receive discounts on places booked at the following events: 

2^nd Annual Media Content World Summit, London, 26^th February 2009 The Media Content World Summit a premier event designed specifically for high-level executives and informed industry leaders and stakeholders from media and broadcast, telecom, content providers and operators and consumer electronics fields. Media guru and ex-Endemol Creative chief Peter Bazalgette leads an impressive line up of speakers including Rory Sutherland, vice-chair of Ogilvy Group UK and Ross Biggam, General Director of Association of Commercial Television in Europe (ACTE). Topics addressed will include commercialising Digital media, monetising social media and advertising in this new world. We’ve negotiated a 20% discount for IAB members. Just email info@technosummits.com and quote ref: IABTECH81208 

We’ve also negotiated a 10% discount for IAB Europe members at The Mobile Research Conference being held in London on 16/17^th February. For more information, please click on the logo below

This month’s trends from our research partner TrendONE include a US based service from RayBan offering virtual trials of their glasses and a satellite navigation system with targeted location-based advertising from Germany. To see this month’s three trends, please click here.

You can order a free trial copy of the latest Trendreport by signing up here .