IAB Proposes New In-Game Ad Measurement Guidelines

The Interactive Advertising Bureau issued a new draft of its in-game ad measurement guidelines yesterday. The release of the document, available on the IAB’s site, begins a public comment period during which buyers and sellers will weigh in on proposed definitions and recording methods for PC, console, and Web-based game ad impressions.

In addition to providing a methodology for counting those impressions, the guidelines create a glossary of in-game advertising terms. These include “cool off period,” which is similar in concept to frequency capping, and “occlusion,” a visual obstruction to an ad. The document was released yesterday during the IAB Marketplace: Games event.

Little communication has come from the IAB’s in-game advertising committee since it issued a Game Ad State of the Union report in the fall of 2007.

For logo-based ads, or ads containing a textual message, the document states an impression counts once a user has viewed an ad for a cumulative 10 seconds. However each fractional exposure has to be at least 0.5 seconds. The cumulative 10 second impression was first established by Massive several years ago, then became generally accepted in the industry.

“Ultimately this is something that the IAB put together to help sell in-game,” said Dino Mytides, director, new media at Interpret LLC a measurement and market research firm that concentrates on the entertainment, media, and technology sectors. “It won’t likely stay like this forever, but for now [the cumulative 10 seconds] is definitely where it should be.”