Social Advertising Best Practices

Social Advertising Best Practices
Released May 2009

IAB Social Advertising Best Practices

The IAB User-Generated Content & Social Media Committee has developed these Best Practices.

About the IAB’s User-Generated Content & Social Media Committee: The User-Generated Content & Social Media Committee of the IAB is comprised of over 150 member companies dedicated to helping develop andexpand the user-generated content space as a viable advertising platform. The committee works to educate marketers and agencies on the strength of user-generated content and social media as a marketing vehicle. A full list of Committee member companies can be found at: http://www.iab.net/member_center/councils_committees_working_groups/committees/user_ generated_content_social_media_committee

Thisdocument can be found on the IAB website at: http://www.iab.net/socialads

IAB Contact Information: Gina Kim Director of Industry Services, IAB 212-380-4728 Gina.Kim@iab.net

© 2009 Interactive Advertising Bureau

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IAB Social Advertising Best Practices

Table of Contents
Executive Summary Social Ad Definitions & Examples Definitions & Key Terms Examples Consumer Policies Opt-inRecommendations Opt-out Recommendations Examples Privacy Guidelines Data Capture Data Disclosure Data Usage Examples 3-5 6-12 6-8 9-12 13-15 13 14 14-15 16-18 16-17 17 17 18

© 2009 Interactive Advertising Bureau

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IAB Social Advertising Best Practices

Executive Summary
Social media is big and getting bigger, providing marketers with a combination of reach, relationships, andrelevance: • Reach: Social media has overtaken email as the most popular consumer activity, according to a recent Nielsen study. Importantly, consumer growth is coming from an older demographic than social media's historical base; for example, Facebook's strongest growth is coming from 35-49 year-olds, adding twice as many 50-64-yearolds as opposed to those under 18. (Nielsen “Global Faces and NetworkedPlaces,” March 9, 2009; MediaPost Blogs Research Brief, “Social Networking Is No Respecter of Age,” March 18, 2009.) Relationships: Social media's strength is in the personal connections it enables, the peer-to-peer contact, providing reasons for consumers to visit regularly and for extended periods of time. Relevance: Consumers are extremely engaged with the content and connections that theirfriends are creating because of its personal relevance.

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     Marketers are looking to maximize the effectiveness of this new medium and are developing social advertising that heightens relevance and engagement through the use of profile data within the ad units themselves, as well as the use of social graph data to target ads. These Best Practices are intended to help protect consumerprivacy, ensure transparency for what and how data is being used, and to define consumer permissions. The purpose of this document is to provide best practices that illustrate, inform, and facilitate greater adoption of the medium by defining creative components, data usage, consumer control, and privacy guidelines and by providing social advertising examples. This document outlines recommendations forthese key social advertising topics and is intended for social networks, publishers, ad agencies, marketers, and service providers delivering social advertising. These best practices were developed via a thorough examination of the critical consumer, media and advertiser issues to help social media further realize its advertising potential.

© 2009 Interactive Advertising Bureau

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IABSocial Advertising Best Practices

Definition of a Social Ad:  An online ad that incorporates user interactions that the consumer has agreed to display and be shared. The resulting ad displays these interactions along with the user’s persona (picture and/or name) within the ad content.
1. Data Used for Social Ads: Social ads can use 1) profile data, such as name, likeness,

groups and...