Dive Brief:

• The CEOs of three of the largest digital ad industry trade organizations — the 4A's, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) — sent a joint letter to the Coalition for Better Ads (CBA) asking the group to adopt a "Better Ads Experience Program," per a press release. 
• The program, though voluntary, would push all involved in digital advertising to comply with the digital ad standards previously set forth by the CBA. The idea behind it is to remove "ambiguity in the marketplace" and take concrete action based on the CBA's standards.
• The letter, addressed to CBA coordinator Stuart Ingis, laid out a 13-point plan for the program that included making browsers and other delivery technology companies adhere to CBA standards as a predicate to participating in the program. It seeks to provide what was called a "safe harbor" for companies, brands, agencies or technology infrastructures complying with those standards from blocking, filtering or other forms obstruction by participating browsers and technology companies.

Dive Insight:

As different ad industry players begin to put more resources into addressing poor user experiences online and an overall messy digital media supply chain, trade organizations are clearly seeking to gain more control over how the CBA's standards are applied. This is especially apparent for the "last mile" of digital ad delivery, which includes the user's web browser of choice. The letter from the three trade groups published Thursday addresses, albeit indirectly, the role major technology companies like Google play in that ecosystem. Google is a member of the Coalition for Better Ads, the world's largest digital advertising platform and also a browser provider through its popular Chrome offering. Since the trade associations are part of the same group, the letter might be an attempt to shine a light on issues that weren't getting the attention within the coalition that these groups feel they deserve. 

In April, the Alphabet-owned company announced it was going to roll out an ad-blocking feature in the mobile and desktop versions of Chrome beginning sometime next year using the CBA standards to determine which ads it would be blocking. It's also introduced a button that mutes all autoplay video on web pages, including ads. Many in the industry view this as unfair, giving Google a degree of control over several aspects of the online pipeline with little oversight. The Better Ads Experience Program — in being voluntary and providing a "safe harbor" — would potentially protect brands and platforms and exert some self-regulatory pressure on Google. 

The CBA, assembled last year from players across the industry, released its list of the six desktop and 12 mobile experiences that it deemed unacceptable in March, including pop-up ads, autoplay video ads with sound, prestitial ads with countdowns and ads with a density greater than 30% on mobile.