In the middle of November, RawVoice joined the Interactive Advertising Bureau, aka IAB.net. We had a couple of reasons to join but there was one pervading reason: The formation of a podcast standards committee.

We wanted to make sure that we and the tens of thousands of podcasters and companies we represent have a voice in the proceedings. The initial document that the IAB is working on is a white paper on the state of the podcasting space that will include common terms, definitions and will detail where the space is today in regards to advertising and the technologies used.

The committee will work on podcast advertising standards that — when published — will have far reaching effects for the community. While this standards document will take some time, when completed there will be a large variety of standards that will include measurement rules, validation requirements, ad units and their definitions akin to what print, broadcast and digital have today.

We foresee podcast statistics systems such as my company as having validation and certification processes. The insights we gain from the committee will benefit all shows using out services.

Having everyone play from a single playbook of rules and standards is important to the industry, as well as ensuring that the podcast media is being measured accurately. All of this will make it easier for the media buyers to buy podcast advertising.

If you do not know who the IAB is, I encourage you to read about them at their website, as it details the breadth of the trade group and their objectives.

As part of the podcast standards committee, we will work to secure transparency for the media creators. The members of the IAB are largely corporations and we want to make sure the voice of the media creator is not lost. Once we get our head wrapped around the process, our goal is to provide feedback to our customers and give them some time to provide input into the process.

This is a pretty big deal: When I first checked there were 32 people working on the committee / document from a wide swath of companies that all have some skin in the game when it comes to podcasting. We’re looking out for the media creators’ interests, after all we’re media creators ourselves.

Todd Cochrane
CEO RawVoice
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