Click here to See Larger Version and Digital Video Overview (pdf)

The IAB says the guidelines will help all stakeholders in the interactive advertising industry—marketers profit from reduced costs of production, creative agencies benefit from the decreased time it takes to execute a campaign and publishers gain from the expansion of the marketplace to more interactive digital advertising. According to the IAB, the guidelines help the industry:

- Define a standard method for video ads to communicate with video players and enable ad compatibility across all VPAID-compliant players

- Provide specifications that can be implemented by any type of video player

- Cut production costs and improve ROI for advertisers while enabling a less intrusive experience for video content viewers.

"Digital video is one of the most critical growth areas for interactive advertising because it provides marketers with the power of sight sound and motion," says IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg. "The standards that the IAB has created have played a key role in paving the way for a greater breadth of marketers across vertical industries to tap its power and I have no doubt that we are only at the very beginning."

The guidelines can be perused in a group of documents located at the IAB’s site here. Documents include an overview, in-stream ad format guidelines and best practices, an ad serving template, and in-stream ad metrics definitions.

Thomas Claburn of InfromationWeek calls this "one of the last major deficiencies of the web browser as a platform for application delivery." In fact it is Mozilla, creators of the Firefox browser who contacted the Khonos Group to get the wheels in motion.

In response, Khronos has created "Accelerated 3D on the web," a working group that is chaired by Mozilla itself. A public release is targeted for within the next year.

“With more and more content moving to the web and JavaScript getting faster every day, the time is right to create an open, general purpose API for accelerated 3D graphics on the web.  Google looks forward to offering its expertise in graphics and web development to this discussion,” said Matt Papakipos, engineering director at Google Inc.

You don’t have to be a Google or an Apple to get involved though. Any interested company is welcome to join Khronos to make contributions, stand for chair, influence the direction of the specification and gain early access to draft specs before any public release.

“The industry has been searching for a way to bring dynamic 3D content to everyone’s web browser for many years,” says President of the Khronos Group, Neil Trevett. It will be interesting to see where this goes. More info here.

Microsoft’s rendering gyrations in its widely-used web browser gave web designers fits over the years. Pages needing special tweaks to overcome IE oddities like its handling of CSS meant designers had to practically design the same pages twice.

A nice round-up of standards compliance on HTML, CSS, DOM, and ECMAScript for IE, Firefox, and Opera may be found at Web Devout. We imagine web designers will look at the browser support comparison there and nod their heads in grim agreement.

A silver lining appeared in the cloud of Internet Explorer rendering with Microsoft’s announcement of better support for web standards.

“Microsoft is now configuring the settings in Internet Explorer 8, the upcoming version of its browser, to render content – by default – using methods that give top priority to Web standards interoperability,” they said.

Web designers may be stunned to read this quote from chief software architect Ray Ozzie: “Even in its first beta, IE8 correctly renders the popular test known as

    Zaheda Bhorat

"Google believes OOXML would be an insufficient and unnecessary standard, designed purely around the needs of Microsoft Office," wrote Open Source Programs Manager Zaheda Bhorat.  "We join the ODF Alliance and many other experts in our belief that OOXML doesn’t meet the criteria required for a globally-accepted standard."

The three links in that last sentence were all put there by Bhorat, by the way, and not WebProNews.  Google appears to be providing as much evidence and support for its position as possible.

Microsoft’s not exactly staying silent, though.  A spokesperson told David Meyer, "Everyone wants to use their data in slightly different ways.  Furthermore, multiple standards can foster a healthy, competitive industry.  By developing tools like the [Office] Open XML-ODF translators and making them widely available, we are promoting customer choice, which is our top priority."

ISO members have a little more than one month left to agree with either one argument or the other; at the end of March, a voting deadline should at least temporarily settle the matter.