NEW YORK, April 12, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The DPAA proudly unveils the DPAA Standard Advertising Units guidelines document today, April 12th, 2011. These guidelines describe a DPAA Standard Ad Unit (SAU), a consistent format for delivery of advertising creative that networks can easily accept for playback on the majority of Digital Place-based networks. The document also introduces a common nomenclature that advertisers, agencies and networks can use to ensure consistency and clarity in creative and operations documents.

"DPAA's purpose of the SAU initiative is to help advertisers and agencies understand how simple it is to execute multi-network Digital Place-based campaigns, while reducing cost and increasing the efficiencies associated with multi-network Digital Place-based buys," said Sue Danaher, President of Digital Place-based Advertising Association [DPAA]. "This is a pivotal moment in the Digital Place-based media space, as we evolve from a nascent industry to one with real scale and reach for advertisers."

"This work was a result of a collaborative effort between the DPAA's Creative Standards Committee and reviewed by the DPAA's Media Operations Committee, the Research and Standards Committee as well as DPAA's Agency Advisory Board," Ms. Danaher continued. "The document was circulated widely among Digital Place-based networks and available on the website as a draft for input and received several rounds of input from members as well as non-members. It has been extremely well vetted."

Each network will be able to run the Standard Ad Unit "as is" or if necessary, a network can "down-convert" to optimize quality playback across their network. It is up to each network to convert the file, if necessary, to perform at optimum quality across a given network.

"We created this document to address a misconception within the advertising community that it is difficult to execute creative for the Digital Place-based medium. The reality is that producing creative for Digital Place-based networks is quite simple, and these guidelines will eliminate this misconception by establishing a prescribed standard video ad format that all networks will accept," said Dan Levi, Zoom Media & Marketing's SVP and the Chair of DPAA's Creative Guidelines and Standards Committee. He maintains, "We have already begun working with DPAA member networks to ensure widespread adoption of SAU's across the digital place-based media industry."

"We are now seeing the significant scaling of screens and new networks, as well as both interactive and 3D creative possibilities, so it's only natural that the creative community needs standard specs like aspect ratios and encoding standards to make it really simple to deploy.  This move makes it a lot easier than last minute re-purposing of existing creative assets," echoed Alan Schulman, CEO of Udig, The Digital Innovations Group, and one of the driving forces behind this initiative. "This is similar to what the IAB did a decade ago to help standardize and grow their business."

More information about the DPAA Standard Advertising Units can be found on the DPAA website, www.dp-aa.org.

About DPAA

Founded in 2006, the Digital Place-based Advertising Association [DPAA], represents leading digital placed-based networks and the advertising community that is actively engaged in planning, buying and evaluating the effectiveness of the medium. On behalf of its members, DPAA seeks to foster ongoing collaboration between agencies and digital place-based advertising networks; provide standards, best practices and industry-wide research; and promote the effectiveness of digital place-based advertising.

Contact
Stan Weil
Marketing Consultant
Stan.weil@dp-aa.org
646-205-8520
www.dp-aa.org

SOURCE Digital Place-based Advertising Association