Advertising Standards Alliance (ASA) for standardizing online advertising practices

The nation's leading online advertising companies today announced the formation of the Advertising Standards Alliance (ASA), an industry trade group focused on resolving industry-wide issues and standardizing online advertising practices. ASA initial membership includes: 24/7 Media, AdForce, Adsmart, BURST! Media, DoubleClick, Engage, Flycast Communications, Microsoft bCentral, Real Media, Sabela Media, SmartAge.com, Teknosurf.com and ValueClick. The ASA also announced the creation of a new ad measurement standard, which will provide additional information for online advertising networks and ad servers to accurately track the measurement of their networks. The ASA's mission is to make it easier for both Web advertisers and publishers to utilize and create value from Internet advertising. Additionally, the group will help online advertisers become more comfortable leveraging the tremendous marketing power and reach of the Internet. By coordinating constructive dialogue and cooperative research among its members, third party organizations and others, the ASA will promote the standards and policies for the online advertising industry. The ASA's first initiative was to create a measurement standard that allows for clear, distinctive measurement of reach and unique visitors. Marketers make multi-million dollar decisions based on the reach and frequency of advertising vehicles. Through this new measurement standard, advertisers will now have a more complete and accurate set of information with which to make these decisions. The measurement standard, which defines both the entity that sold the ad and the entity that served the ad, will be implemented by all ASA member companies within the next six months.