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As part of IAB Canada’s mandate to assist the Canadian marketing community in developing processes that make Digital advertising easier to plan, buy and execute, IAB Canada today released its NEW! Online, Mobile + Tablet Ad Standards And Creative Specs For 2012.

In coordination with IAB USA, IAB Canada’s Ad Operations Committee, Video Committee and Mobile Council worked to ensure that North American Standards + Guidelines align as much as possible, while still providing for Canadian-specific differences where needed.

What’s New In The Online Ad Formats
Getting Ready For The Canadian Self-Regulatory Program For Online Behavioural Advertising (OBA)
In anticipation of the 2012 launch of Canada’s Self-Regulatory Program For OBA, and the requirement for Advertisers to provide Consumers with clear notice when the Websites they are visiting are supplying them with behaviourally-based ads, an additional 5k of file size has been added to all ad specs, in order to allow for the Self-Regulatory “Ad Choices icon” to be placed on OBA ads of all shapes and sizes.

What’s New In Mobile + Tablet Formats
High-Resolution Mobile Ad Units
While maintaining several of the Mobile ad units originally-developed by the MMA in order to provide Advertisers with the greatest reach possible for their Mobile Display ad campaigns in Canada, IAB Canada has also added NEW! Mobile ad units for high resolution smartphones, in anticipation of the rapid changes expected within the Canadian Mobile landscape in 2012.

“Alongside the new Universal Ad Package for Mobile Phones, we’re introducing high-resolution Mobile ad sizes to highlight the rich creative options that Advertisers already have available to them,” says Julie Ford, Director of Councils, IAB Canada. “And while the guidelines currently apply only to a handful of phone models (iPhone 4+ and Samsung Galaxy, among them), six months from now, we expect more models will be able to feature these high-resolution ads, so we want to get everyone thinking about designing for them now.”

Tablet Ad Units + In-Stream Video Guidelines
IAB Canada has also laid out preliminary specs for Tablet Leaderboard, Big Box and Full-page ad units; and provided rudimentary Guidelines for In-stream (pre-roll) Video for Mobile + Tablet devices as well.

1. NEW! Partnership with ADOPS Garage On FREE! AdOps AdVisor Ad-Checking Tool
   ADOPS Garage’s NEW! AdOps AdVisor Tool application created for, and FREE! for use by IAB Canada Members, allows Agencies and their design partners as well as Ad Operations professionals from both the Publisher and Agency sides of the business to pre-test Online Display ads; determine if they meet IAB Canada Standards; and if not, understand where problems within the ads exist, so that they can be quickly and easily remedied. Over a year in the making, and tested on more than 2,000 ads as supplied by IAB Canada’s Ad Operations Committee Members, ADOPS Garage’s AdVisor Tool tests Online ad compliance For Standard + Flash (swf) Online Display Ads (and third party tags) in terms of:
2. Ad Size, Weight
3. Ad Animation Time
4. Flash Version
5. Action Script Version
6. Compilation Engine
7. Compression Rate
8. CPU Usage of P3, P4 and Core 2 computer processors
9. ClickTag Type, Testing + Verification
10. ClickTag Insertion (AS2, AS3)
11. Audio On/Off
12. External Calls (HTTP or Java Scripts requests)
13. Creative Preview
14. Malware Detection
15. Cookie Detection

“We’re happy to be able to provide IAB Canada Members with FREE! access to the AdOps Advisory Tool, given how important the contributions of IAB Canada’s Ad Operations Committee Members were with respect to both shaping the technical requirements for, and volunteering their time in the testing of the application,” says Alexandre Henault, President, ADOPS Garage, “In the future, with IAB Canada’s Members assistance, we’ll look forward to adding a variety of new features.”