2015 International Breakfast

Empowering the Global Network to set the pace and drive the industry

The International Breakfast Session took place at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona.

Digital advertising leaders from around the world convene at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting. This year, the International breakfast took place on the closing day of the conference where lively discussion ensued on the pressing issues facing the industry and how we can work better together to advance our common interests.

Randall Rothenberg, President & CEO, IAB and David Doty, EVP and CMO, IAB, opened the breakfast by welcoming over 50 participants from 11 countries, and thanking and congratulating Guy Phillipson for an incredible 10 years at the helm of IAB UK.

Alexandra Salomon, Senior Director International, IAB, reviewed the 3 part agenda and handed over the podium to Guy Phillipson, CEO, IAB UK to lead the International Town Hall on Mobile Integration.

To set the stage, Guy shared some statistics about the UK market, where time spent in digital became a majority last year and mobile now dominates digital time. Mobile could be the majority of UK digital ad spend next year. So in this changing landscape, cross screen strategies are vital and monetization becomes a key challenge for media owners.

Anne Goodman, VP of Global Sales Marketing & Enablement, BBC Advertising, and Vice Chairman of IAB Europe, highlights the challenges her company facing. Without access to subscription data, tracking consumers on mobile devices, targeting and frequency capping are real problems and they look to the IAB to help find solutions to access the right data and define measurement.

From a very different part of the world, Miranda Dimopoulos, Executive Director, IAB Singapore, underscored: “Mobile is at the heart of everything we offer.” Given the diversity of the markets in Asia, the importance of lobbying and policy to establish standards is undeniable.

Adding a perspective from Latin America, Gabriel Richaud, Director, IAB Mexico agreed that mobile is everywhere and needs to be part of the digital landscape and not addressed separately. IAB Mexico presented a few months ago their third edition of “Investment Study on Mobile Communication in Mexico” to provide relevant and strategic information for companies on advertising and communications on mobile platforms.

“Mobile is not only a new medium, like TV was at one time,” Rothenberg said, “but we are seeing an extraordinary rapid adoption.” He goes on to comment that we are seeing a return of interruptive advertising because of mobile. Where it used to be one of the worse kinds of advertising, cluttering the screen, the remarkable success of mobile is that it puts ads in the middle of the content.

Julian Zilberbrand, EVP, Activation Standards, Insights & Technology, ZenithOptimedia argued that industry associations, such as the 4A’s, the ANA and IAB, need to get the ecosystem to open up versus mega media companies owning independent closed environments. “There is an opportunity to push storytelling and creative,” Zilberbrand underscored.

IAB Canada, Vice President, Operations, Julie Ford, challenged everyone in the room to first define what is mobile, and perhaps separating smartphones from everything else. IAB Canada has seen huge interest and active engagement from agencies in their mobile webinar series where they talk about the changes made and best practices.

Peter Minnium, Head of Brand Initiatives, IAB, added that one of the key objectives over the course of the year is to establish responsive standards with a working group made up of agencies and publishers, building off the work from IAB Canada.

Alexandra concluded the International Town Hall discussion reminding everyone that the IAB would be running a 2015 Global Mobile Anthology and a 2015 IAB State of the Mobile World, which last year 30 countries contributed to.

IAB/BabyCenter Research

Julie Michaelson, Vice President of Sales, BabyCenter,  presented the findings of the research, along with Anna Bager, Senior Vice President & , Mobile and Video, IAB. Baby Center will also be doing a deep dive on this research in New York, and 2 others in April in Canada and the UK.

The group also discussed potential future global research initiatives such as digital video consumption habits or another life stages report that the IABs around the world could work together on, as was done last year with the Global Mobile World Cup Survey.

A Chat on Viewability

The morning closed with Lou Paskalis, SVP, Enterprise Media Executive, Bank of America Julian Zilberbrand, EVP, Activation Standards, Insights & Technology, ZenithOptimedia, along with Sherrill Mane, Senior Vice President, Research, Analytics Measurement, IAB, engaging in a fiery Chat on Viewability – what it means and where we stand in planning and buying media with common metrics. The vision is clear but the path to implementation is far from simple.

A few other announcements:

We are also happy to share there has been some positive movement in the plans to develop a Global Revenue report with PwC as they are now in active discussions to cover the Chinese market.With thanks to Alex Propes, Senior Manager Public Policy, IAB, IAB has expanded the Global Legal Summaries page which covers the regulatory structure and recent developments in 21 countries now.

Stay tuned for further updates and next steps in moving this very important initiative forward and be sure to save the date for the next significant big meeting, IAB Global Summit, to be held in New York on September 30 and October 1, 2015. In the meantime, it is exciting to see the IAB Global Network continue to increase in size, scope and capability, see more at iab.com/global and browse the full IAB Global Network Facebook photo album here.