The Interactive Advertising Bureau hopes to build stronger standards for the industry—both now and far into the future—with its new IAB Tech Lab. The association’s strategy for funding the project is tied to its evolving membership.

You won’t find any vials of chemicals in this lab, but the experiments conducted there could have huge effects on the advertising industry.

This week, the Interactive Advertising Bureau announced the launch of IAB Technical Laboratories, an effort to improve the industry’s standardization processes for current and future online ad formats. Ads for the internet of things? They’ll be among the projects researchers will be working on. Also on the agenda: improved certification for vendors in the industry.

The new offering will be available to the association’s general membership at no extra cost.

“The IAB Tech Lab will guide the conversation and cooperation necessary for the emergence, implementation, adaptation, and interoperability of global standards in our collective industry,” IAB President and CEO Randall Rothenberg said in a statement. “In addition, we recognize the buy-side’s major stake in the evolution and operations of the digital media and advertising supply chain, and welcome their partnership in this initiative.”

Beyond Inventory

Also in the works at IAB is a broadening of its membership. Currently, general members with voting rights are “sellers of interactive advertising inventory.” Now the definition includes “companies that sell, distribute, or optimize digital advertising or marketing programs.”

As a result of the change, IAB will grant voting rights to many of its associate members, who can now become general members.

“This shift in membership structure will give many of the key businesses that facilitate and power the interactive advertising industry an increased role in setting the vision and strategy of the IAB,” Ziff Davis CEO Vivek Shah, chair of IAB, noted in the association’s statement.

The two strategies are intertwined—the increased revenues from the expanded member tiers will help pay for the lab.

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