Industry responds to advertiser demand for standardisation, impact and consistency across Europe

The European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) and the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe (IAB Europe) today announced the launch of the first European online ad format standardisation. The EIAA and IAB Europe see this European consolidation as an important step towards global consistency.

This move demonstrates the industry’s commitment to making online as easy to plan, buy and create as offline campaigns and comes in response to demands from the planning, buying and advertiser communities for a simplified, cost effective and creative ad offering.

The package of European Online Ad Formats is a series of recommended ad sizes which will be implemented across EIAA and IAB Europe member networks to facilitate the implementation and growth of pan-European online advertising campaigns.

This standardisation will increase the efficiency of planning and executing an online advertising campaign and is expected to remove the confusion created by sites having disparate format specifications and reduce the number of ads per page. The larger ad sizes in the package, such as the 728x90 Super Banner and 160x600 Wide Skyscraper, will give greater impact and encourage creativity.

To create consistency, transparency and comparability, EIAA and IAB member organisations have agreed to move towards a standard suite of six ad formats. These include the four formats contained in the Universal Ad Package (UAP) announced by the IAB US in April 2003 as well as two of the most currently used ad formats across Europe, the 468 x 60 Traditional Banner and 120 x 600 Skyscraper.

The European Online Standard Ad Package includes:
         * 468 x 60 Traditional Banner
         * 120 x 600 Skyscraper
         * 160 x 600 UAP Wide Skyscraper
         * 180 x 150 UAP Rectangle
         * 300 x 250 UAP Medium Rectangle
         * 728 x 90 UAP Super Banner

Historically many web sites have defined the formats for online advertising according to individual site layout which has resulted in many formats being offered to advertisers. Few standard formats have been established to date and the EIAA and IAB members have decided to create this European standard whilst gradually retiring other formats in order to simplify online media planning, reduce production costs and give greater scope to online creativity. The multitude of formats in use currently leads to increased production costs for agencies and clients as well as making online media planning complex and time consuming.

Michael Kleindl, EIAA Chairman, commented, "This initiative is a response to continued feedback from the advertiser, planning and buying communities regarding the need for simplified formats as a means to executing more effective campaigns. We want to generate more scope for creativity and facilitate the growth of truly pan-European ad campaigns."

"This is another watershed in the internet's commercial development.” said Danny Meadows-Klue, president, IAB Europe. “These core sizes will become available across thousands of European websites giving advertisers the chance to run pan-European campaigns on a scale never before possible."

According to Nielsen//NetRatings, EIAA members AOL, Lycos Europe, MSN, Tiscali, T-Online and Yahoo! have a combined reach of 64.7 million (78% of total) active home users across Europe (UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Netherlands, Switzerland).

Jupiter Media Metrix forecasts the European Online Advertising market to be worth €4,014 million by 2008.


The European Interactive Advertising Association (www.eiaa.net) is a unique pan-European trade organisation for sellers of interactive media. The primary objectives of the EIAA are to champion and to improve the understanding of the value of online advertising as a medium, to grow the European interactive advertising market by proving its effectiveness, thus increasing its share of total advertising investment. Its members are currently AdLINK Internet Media AG, AOL Europe, IP-WEB.NET (part of the RTL Group), Lycos Europe, MSN International, Tiscali, T-Online International, Yahoo! Europe. It is chaired by Michael Kleindl, Managing Partner of Valkiria Network