Publicis Media UK: Championing the IAB Gold Standard for better digital advertising

At Publicis Media UK, we are leaders in advertising, committed to promoting a transparent, accountable, and sustainable digital advertising ecosystem, which the IAB Gold Standard helps to promote and codify.

The IAB Gold Standard integrates efforts from IAB TechLab, TAG, The Coalition for Better Ads, and IAB Europe, focusing on improving ad quality, combating fraud, enhancing brand safety, increasing supply chain transparency, and ensuring privacy compliance.

Since becoming the first holding group to be accredited in back in 2017, Publics has continued collaborating with IAB to shape the annual evolutions and expansions. Key updates in that time include areas such as DemandChain Object, SupplyChain Object, (app-)ads.txt diligence in financial client onboarding via the FCA register, scam ad alerts through the ASA, and the Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) version 2.2. All of which we encourage all our supply chain partners to adopt.

The latest updated for 2025, centre on:

• Sustainability: Introducing RefSettings to control ad refresh rates, which helps in reducing a site’s carbon footprint, whilst also improving our advertisers’ time on screen and helping to identify Made for Advertising (MFA) sites.
• Video Advertising: Enhancements through the Ad Creative ID Framework (ACIF) and VAST addendum for Connected TV, aimed at refining video ad experiences and addressing challenges like frequency capping, brand separation, and cross-platform campaign measurement. These are accompanied by the new IAB Tech Lab video signals​ which provides valuable updated standardised practices and criteria for video ads to categorised as a specific type of video ad (e.g. Instream or standalone/no content)
• Podcasts: Establishing consistent measurement standards with the Podcast Measurement Guidelines 2.2, addressing a dynamic and uniquely challenging digital channel.

We are not only continuing our support for the IAB Gold Standard, but we also encourage our clients and supply chain partners to align themselves with certified companies and embrace these evolving standards. Together, we can foster a sustainable and effective digital advertising future.

For more details, please reach out to your Publicis contact or visit IAB UK.