The IAB board will meet this afternoon to appoint a new Chair to replace Nicole Bence who’s switch from Seven as Network Digital Sales Director to Nova Entertainment’s Chief Commercial Officer triggered the vote.

The candidate line-up is said to be short for the chair’s role as the IAB board settles in new directors, of which their member companies pay circa $100k for IAB board representation. Lead contenders are thought to be former IAB chair and Nine-owned Pedestrian CEO Matt Rowley and Yahoo APAC CEO Paul Sigaloff as two of the more experienced publishing execs on the board. But there is uncertainty over Sigaloff’s tenure with the digital publisher and adtech provider after a global restructuring last week by Yahoo’s private equity owners, Apollo Global Management, saw at least half the company’s ANZ staff and almost all of its commercial team laid off. 

Sigaloff has stayed silent so far on speculation around his tenure. 

IAB CEO Gai Le Roy confirmed Sigaloff would be present for today’s board vote but declined to comment on the next chair until after board proceedings. 

There is market conjecture of wrangling between publishers and platforms for the chair’s role – Facebook’s Group Industry Director Naomi Shepherd and Google’s Managing director of Large Customer Sales, Rhys Williams are IAB board members. But others suggested the tech platforms are aware that could be viewed as a dominant platform holding undue influence. “Google and Facebook are there to block,” said one. “Taking the chair’s role would be too controversial. They know that.”

Crunch time

The new IAB chair will start at a crucial time for the IAB. 

Its new, officially endorsed digital audience measurement provider, Ipsos, is expected to launch an overhauled measurement service by March. Meanwhile Nielsen, which held the contract for decades, is in market with its own, revamped rival digital audience measurement product. There has been no IAB sanctioned digital audience measurement system since April 2021 when it pulled its endorsement of Nielsen.

Nielsen's refusal to go quietly – it has been actively wooing publishers over the near two-year void – has created a headache for both buy- and sell-side of the market on which system to use and how, and which numbers to believe.

The new chair will also steer the IAB through what is expected to be another round of fierce regulatory pressure on the adtech sector – two weeks ago the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a lawsuit against Google, which includes a move to break up Google’s advertising business based on its market power and dominance on all sides of the digital advertising system and alleges anti-competitive advertising exchange auction manipulation. 

The DOJ is seeking to apply fiduciary responsibility on the adtech sector similar to that of stock markets. That essentially would mean Google could not be a buyer and seller of advertising and control the trading exchange mechanism between the two, as it does now. The DOJ wants to see the unbundling of Google’s ad business across search and Youtube and its control of the world’s biggest open advertising exchange. 

Local fallout

Australia's competition regulator has faced calls to take similar action and submissions to Federal Treasury are due today on responses to the fifth interim report from the ACCC’s Digital Platforms Services Inquiry, designed to set competition frameworks to prevent future monopolistic behaviour. Current competition laws require the ACCC to act only after what it identifies as anti-competitive behaviour.  

“What’s going on with adtech internationally is really interesting and important,” said one regulatory insider. “The comments from DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter [Assistant Attorney General] are pretty important – he said adtech is the pipes and plumbing of the digital advertising system. It pretty much says publishers, advertisers and therefore consumers are getting screwed.”

The pick-up internationally to regulate tech platforms – and adtech – will bring the current round of inquiries by the ACCC and government into sharper focus – and maintains a heavy regulatory workload on the IAB and its members.

The IAB has a delicate task to manage conflicting agendas among its members – publishers versus Google and Facebook versus the adtech supply chain. There is already said to be frustration over its latest adtech submission to Treasury in which Google is said to have “watered down” the IAB to a neutral position. 

Currency conflicts

As the new Ipsos system prepares to go live, the IAB will hope industry backs its new digital audience currency. While Le Roi has said board members are universally backing Ipsos, media agency groups are still using Nielsen – and some have recently renewed contracts. Many are waiting on testing the new Ipsos service before making a call; others say they want to support the IAB-endorsed service. 

Zenith National Head of Digital & Data, Joshua Lee, said his firm was still to decide how it will treat the competing currencies. “At a group agency level we recently subscribed to Nielsen,” he told Mi3. “There is a joint conversation at a [Publicis] group level underway but I would say we’re reserving to commit to one or the other as of yet. We don’t know enough about [Ipsos] syndicated data and how it’s put together yet.”  

Omnicom Media Group Chief Investment Officer Kristiaan Kroon said the intent from his group is to back the IAB-endorsed Ipsos, but with caveats. “We will give it serious consideration and as much as possible try to align to one currency while always keeping enough flexibility – it might be a client has specific needs,” he said.