Pressure rises on IAB to set up search standards

New Media Age, August, 2003 by Chris Dillabough

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is coming under increasing pressure to take urgent action to tackle the issue of standards in search marketing.

In June the IAB said it would look at establishing a set of industry-agreed standards to govern the rapidly growing search marketing sector (NMA 5 June). That followed complaints from some agencies that paid-for engines like Google, Overture and Espotting weren't doing enough to protect their clients' brand names from abuse.

Search engines strongly deny it's their role to police the activities of brands' affiliate partners. But critics have hit back saying the engines ought to standardise how they treat complaints.

At agency Digit-All, planner/ buyer Oliver Newton believes it's a continuing problem...