Each month the IAB profiles a Council Member working hard to proactively define the future of digital advertising.
Name: Robert Rivers
IAB Council: Standards & Guidelines Council
Involved in the IAB Council since: 2014
Day job + company: National Ad Operations Manager at REA Group
I joined the Council because: I first got involved with the IAB when I was asked by one of my colleagues at realestate.com.au to help out organising the first ad ops conference in Sydney.
Recent key projects the Council has accomplished: It was really exciting to see the IAB hosting an ad ops conference in both Sydney and Melbourne in the first half of 2016. I’m now being asked when ad ops conferences will be held in Brisbane and Perth! It was also great to see the IAB on the front foot with HTML5 ad specs, guidelines and even shared libraries thanks to the hard work of members of the S&G council when Flash was pretty dramatically killed off in 2015.
Upcoming projects the Council is currently working on: The team on the Standard & Guidelines council is currently working on quite a few projects in areas such as HTML5, VAST/VPAID, adblocking and viewability.
What excites me about digital: What’s really exciting to me about digital is how dynamic it is; pretty much the only thing you can count on is that everything is changing all the time. It keeps you on your toes, and if you’re not constantly asking questions and learning new things, you’re doing something wrong.
If I wasn’t working in digital, I would be: To be honest, I would probably be very bored. When I was eight-years-old I either wanted to be an astronaut or Batman, and both still look like fun to me!
