The Association for Downloadable Media will announce their standards for downloadable media at the upcoming Ad Tech conference in San Francisco. I spent some time reading about ADM and they are an association of downloadable media publishers who advocate for both advertisers and publishers in the world of downloadable media. Like me, you might ask, “What exactly do they mean by downloadable media?” From their website the organization’s mission is:

To provide leadership in and organization of advertising and audience measurement standards, research, education and advocacy to all those involved in downloadable media (such as podcast/ATOM/RSS media enclosures) across the Internet, mobile devices, handsets, set-top boxes, P2P and other emerging platforms.

Yes, I have known for a long time that podcast publishers are trying to discover viable and sustainable ways to monetize their offerings, but I didn’t know that standards were in the works. Upon reflection, like all platforms on the internet, this medium requires workable and accepted guidelines that allow publishers to intelligently quantify their value proposition to advertisers. In other words, without the ability to rely on duplicateable (if that’s a word) ad formats, it would be difficult for advertisers to syndicate their advertising messages and therefore leverage creative across multiple channels.

But before we can look at this announcement in the context of podcasts only, from their missions statement, we see that ADM is concerned with other downloadable media formats also, like RSS feeds, Atom feeds, and certainly others. To add to possible confusion, how is downloadable defined anyway? To wit, everything on the internet is downloadable. So, do they plan on suggestion ad standards for everything on the internet? Probably not.

It seems that any standards creation body has a two-fold task: getting stakeholders to accept the standards, and also getting stakeholders to accept them as the actual organization to suggest the standards in the first place. Has ADM achieved the latter? I don’t know. As this emerging discussion continues, it is clear that those who wish to regulate must solidify their position in the minds of the regulated. In all fairness, the organization was only formed in November 2007. And already they have participating advisers from Microsoft and Nokia.

Wether or not ADM is the organization that gets the job done or not, their mission will continue to be something that is vitally important. Seek out and accept standards, or languish with minimal advertising penetration.

[Via Mashable]