Wireless Advertising Association Releases Standards for WAP, SMS and PDA

WAA Unveils First Standards

More to Follow

For more than a year, companies working in the emerging field of mobile and wireless advertising have clamored for a set of technical and creative standards that would make it easier to run ad campaigns and that would help drive adoption of the medium. With more than one hundred people from 15 different nations in attendance, the Wireless Advertising Association on Tuesday met that demand by unveiling a comprehensive set of standards for mobile and wireless devices in three key platform areas: Short Message Service (SMS, also known as text messaging), Wireless Application Protocol (WAP, or the wireless web), and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs, such as the Palm Pilot and PocketPC). The draft standards will be reviewed by the full membership for thirty days before being adopted throughout the industry.

"The Ad Standards Committee, lead by Tom Bair, did a tremendous and thorough job," said Robert O'Hare, WAA chairman. "We anticipate that their work will be embraced by the industry and bring this medium into the advertising mainstream."

More than 30 experts from industry-leading companies participated in the select sub-committees for the three platforms, including the WAA's European arm, which developed the SMS Standards for GSM networks

"This is a complex medium, with wide variations in device technology, screen sizes, and publisher needs," said Tom Bair, chairman of the Ad Standards Committee. "Standards will make it dramatically easier for advertisers, ad agencies, 3rd party servers/networks, and publishers to coordinate on a wireless campaign."

The standards being published today create a common set of formats and sizes so that ad creative executions and inventory will be interchangeable. Just as in print, television, and the Internet, an ad agency will write copy or create a graphic in the standardized formats. That creative can then run over any ad network, or with any publisher, since they will have designed their content to leave "holes" for ads in those formats. Advertisers can relax knowing that every consumer will get the same message, regardless of which mobile carrier they use or what device is in their pocket.

Draft Ad Standards:

SMS

For GSM networks, lead by Hartti Suomela of Nokia, head of the European standards committee

-- "Sponsorship": A message which is up to 34 characters in length (two lines of text on most phones), designed for sponsoring content which precedes or follows the ad unit

-- "Full Message": A message up to 160 characters in length. 

For non-GSM networks, lead by Barry Peters of Lot21:

-- These standards will apply to other mobile networks, such as CDMA and TDMA, the predominant systems in the U.S.

-- Sponsorship: A message which is up to 34 characters in length (two lines of text on most phones), designed for sponsoring content which precedes or follows the ad unit

-- Full Message: A message up to 100 characters in length. WAP, lead by John Milne, Weather.com:

TEXT ADS

15 Characters (1 line, fixed)

30 Characters (2 lines, fixed)

34 Characters (1 line of Marquee/Times Square* text)

GRAPHIC ONLY ADS

80 x 8 pixels

80 x 15 pixels

80 x 20 pixels

80 x 31 pixels 

RAPHIC PLUS TEXT ADS

80 x 8 pixels plus one line of text (see text specs above)

80 x 15 pixels plus one line of text (see text specs above)

80 x 15 pixels plus two lines of text (see text specs above)

80 x 20 pixels plus one (or two) lines of text 

INTERSTITIALS

All standard sizes listed above can be run as interstitials. An 80 x 31 pixel interstitial will run full screen on a four-line display.

- Should time out at 5 seconds

- User should have the option to skip PDA, lead by James Ryan, AvantGo Palm OS PocketPC OS Comments Recommended

150x24 pixels 215x34 pixels

150x32 pixels 215x46 pixels 2 lines of text

Supported

150x18 pixels 215x26 pixels 1 line of text

150x40 pixels 215x58 pixels 3 lines of text

("Supported" formats are acknowledged to be in use by the industry, but are not recommended by the WAA. They will be reevaluated as usage grows.)

"These new standards are the latest in a series of initiatives the WAA has undertaken to build a strong foundation for this emergent marketing channel," said Don Albert, Vice Chairman of the WAA and Senior VP of marketing at wireless mobility company fusionOne. "Together with our previously announced privacy and anti-spam guidelines, and standard ad measurement definitions, these standards help position the industry for strong, and responsible, growth."

The next WAA General meeting in the United States will be in conjunction with the CTIA conference in San Diego on September 13th. The next WAA General Meeting in Europe is being planned in conjunction with Penton Media's SMS conference in London, on Oct. 1st. Additional WAA meetings are presently being scheduled for Tokyo in October and in New York in November 2001. For further information about WAA meetings, visit the WAA website at: www.waaglobal.org


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