IAB’s Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence asks for comments on MRAID

In April of this year, several ORMMA members started work with an IAB Working group to define a common API for mobile rich media advertisements based on the ORMMA project, establishing a framework of principles and guidelines to help the mobile marketplace reach new levels of consistency, efficiency and effectiveness.

 

The ORMMA thought leaders from The Weather Channel, Pointroll, Crisp Media, AdMarvel, Goldspot Media, Yahoo and Google were closely involved. There were also 20 other companies involved, such as 24/7, Accuweather, Mediamind, NY Times, Medialets and Microsoft to name a few. The discussions resulted in simplifications and adjustments to the scope of the proposed APIs, solving problems for various constituencies.

 

Now, this process has produced MRAID (Mobile Rich Media Ad Interface Definition) which is still based on the ORMMA API and is similar enough that it is practical for ORMMA to share the basic API. However, there are a good number of important functions that are supported by ORMMA that won’t make it in a 1.0 version of MRAID. So, what is next?

1. A public comment period for the MRAID spec will run through September 30, 2011. After that, in the first week of October, the MRAID working group will meet again to evaluate comments received, make changes if necessary and release the final version 1.0.
2. By that time, the ORMMA members will make all the small changes necessary to the documentation and the open source code to ensure that the final MRAID v.1.0 and ORMMA share the same API wherever functions overlap. The ORMMA group wants adoption of this standard and will support vendors of commercial MRAID implementations with reference implementations for various platforms, sample ad units and clear direction for how that standard can evolve in the future.

You can download the 40-page MRAID specification here.

 

Here is a link to the full press release from the IAB.