Little progress on FAST ad guidelines

By Gerald Burstyn

     Is the web too young to tame? Perhaps.
     When a well-publicized industry coalition met last summer to discuss establishing voluntary guidelines for internet advertising, there was hope that some agreement could be forged regarding what the wild and woolly online ad universe should look like.
     Participants left the conference, organized by a Procter & Gamble-sponsored group called FAST (Future of Advertising Stakeholders), with the promise that the guidelines would be issued shortly.
     The summer ended. The fall ended. Finally, on March 1, seven months after the conference, FAST sent its guidelines to more than 600 companies and made them available at its web site (www.fastinfo.org).  An additional set of voluntary standards, regarding internet audience measurement, were released the following day.
     The advertising guidelines recommend a standard size and download time for digital ads that, FAST says, will both encourage common technology among developers and produce more interactive, rich media-driven ads for consumers.
     But what started as an ambitious effort to bring all factions of the online ad world together appears to have quietly fizzled. The original 45-day period during which FAST was scheduled to field comments from the industry passed a month ago, without comment.
     According to a FAST spokesperson, the industry consortium is hard at work. The deadline for comments is really more of a ‘‘rolling 45 days,’‘ he says. FAST officials are most immediately concerned with an upcoming European conference.
     In the meantime, a Media Life survey of advertising agencies, internet consulting firms and market research companies has shown that few people have seen the guidelines, much less read them.
    And though most agree that some form of voluntary standardization is a good idea, there is little consensus on what those standards should be.
     ‘‘As soon as somebody give me rules, I'm going to want to break them,’‘ says Mark Grimes, president and CEO of Eyescream Interactive, a Portland-based internet consulting firm. ‘‘What's different gets noticed and what's noticed gets results.’‘
     Grimes, who was unaware of the FAST guidelines, says he would have no problem with standardizing digital ad terms like ‘‘hits,’‘ ‘‘page views,’‘ or ‘‘unique visitors,’‘ but to suggest ad sizes and download times goes a bit far.
     ‘‘It ain't never going to happen,’‘ he says. ‘‘People are always going to try different things. That's the nature of the internet.’‘
     Dennis Driscoll, managing director and co-founder of Thunder House, McCann Erickson's interactive division, insists the marketplace should be allowed to decide the future of digital advertising.
     ‘‘Ultimately, the consumer will decide good taste,’‘ he says. FAST ‘‘was a success in creating a forum for the issues,’‘ says Driscoll, who was unable to attend last summer's meeting, ‘‘but creating guidelines for the online world -- not really.’‘
      In fact, Driscoll says, the lawlessness of the internet is part of what makes it attractive. ‘‘This is the Wild West of media right now. There aren't any rules.’‘
     Jim Nail, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, takes a differing view. He suggests that the internet could use some policing and predicts the FAST standards will be widely adopted.
     ‘‘FAST is trying to bring some degree of order to the chaos that reigns in internet advertising,’‘ he explains. ‘‘Dismissing the standards for the sake of creative egos doesn't serve anyone.’‘
      The FAST spokesperson couldn't say how many people had seen the guidelines but guessed they had been widely reviewed.  ‘‘Anybody in the business who isn't aware of them hasn't been reading,’‘ he says.
     Mike Donahue, a FAST committee member and executive vice president at the American Association of Advertising Agencies, says the digital ad industry needs the direction the FAST standards provide.
        ‘‘The medium is in its primary school phase,’‘ he says, ‘‘and the only way it's going to grow from an advertising standpoint is to have guidelines.’‘

- Gerald Burstyn is a staff writer for Media Life.