Rich Media Creative Guidelines.

With brand marketers more frequently and more broadly leveraging cutting-edge rich media for their interactive campaigns, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has updated its Rich Media Creative Guidelines for the first time since 2008. The result of nine months of work by a cross-industry group that balanced the requirements of advertisers and publishers with the need for positive consumer experiences, the revised guidelines were released today at the IAB Ad Operations Summit in New York City.

Significant changes include:

– Addition of the IAB’s six recently launched Rising Stars display ad formats
– Inclusion of maximum CPU usage as a key guiding metric
– Increased maximum frame rates for previously existing rich media formats
– Increased length of in-ad video play

“Since we last revised the Rich Media Creative Guidelines three years ago, brands have greatly intensified their desire to engage consumers through interactive ads,” said Steve Sullivan, Vice President, Digital Supply Chain Solutions, IAB. “The guidelines reflect the increased use of existing rich media formats, as well as improvements in technology available to and used by consumers, and especially the recent debut of our Rising Stars units, which were specifically developed with consumer engagement objectives in mind.”

Making it easier than ever for the industry to tap into the IAB’s various guidelines, the updated Rich Media Creative Guidelines, as well as the IAB’s guidelines for Standard Ad Units and Universal Ad Packages, are all being featured on a single online page at www.iab.net/displayguidelines.

“Now that we’ve put creative guidelines for all ad formats in one place for the first time, creative shops have a one-stop location for all display ad specifications,” said David Doty, Senior Vice President and CMO, IAB. “We believe that if we make the guidelines easily accessible, adoptable and understandable, creative agencies can do better what they do best—designing ads to the limits of their creativity.”

Separately, at the Summit, Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) said it would support the full range of rich media formats, including Rising Stars, through a new creative validation service called “Project Adthenticate,” including standardized CPU measurement and rich media guideline checks. The new service combined with existing Adobe tools like Flash Professional, ensures that ads will be built from the ground up in compliance with the updated IAB Rich Media Creative Guidelines.

“IAB’s new Rich Media Creative Guidelines show that interactive advertising has moved beyond the banner ad to become a critical component of high-impact brand advertising campaigns,” said Todd Teresi, Vice President and General Manager of Media Solutions at Adobe. “We’ve integrated these guidelines into a public beta of Project Adthenticate, our new service for validation and optimization of ads to creative specifications. We look forward to working with the entire ad community to fuel the growth of high-impact, rich media brand advertising.”

For more information at http://www.iab.net>