IAB Opens 30-Day Public Comment on Standard for 6 Video Ad Formats

For marketers navigating a fragmented video landscape, the lack of uniform ad formats means manual campaign reconciliation and opaque metrics. The IAB’s proposed standard—covering six distinct video environments—promises a common language that could finally bring programmatic efficiency to video advertising, enabling brands to invest with confidence in CTV, social video, and emerging channels.

On July 9, 2026, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), in collaboration with its technical arm IAB Tech Lab, released the Redefining Media Types (RMT) Standard for public comment, a move that could fundamentally reshape how digital video advertising is planned, bought, and measured. The proposed framework, open for feedback from brands, agencies, publishers, ad tech partners, and other stakeholders until August 8, 2026, aims to solve the chronic fragmentation that has plagued video ad classification for years. As video consumption splinters across Connected TV (CTV), online platforms, social feeds, FAST channels, video podcasts, and retail media, the underlying systems that execute ad transactions have clung to outdated or inconsistent definitions, creating friction, errors, and inefficiencies that cost the industry billions in misallocated spend.

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Given that global digital video ad spend surpassed $100 billion in 2025 and continues to grow at double-digit rates, the stakes are enormous.

The core problem is semantic: what exactly constitutes a "video impression" or a "view" in an environment where Auto-Play, sound-off, and picture-in-picture experiences vary wildly by platform? Jamie Finstein, vice president of IAB’s Media Center, captured the urgency: “As the video marketplace has expanded across platforms, formats, and viewing experiences, the industry needs a more consistent way to define and classify digital video environments.” The RMT Standard directly addresses this by establishing comprehensive, standardized definitions for digital video product types and their associated advertising formats across six key categories—Connected TV, Online Video, social video, FAST, video podcasting, and retail video. These definitions consider channels, screens, context, and ad formats, with the goal of serving as an authoritative guide for media agencies, publishers, networks, technology partners, and brands.

IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur emphasized the technical underpinnings, noting that many ad systems still rely on inconsistent or outdated classifications. By partnering with IAB, the Tech Lab can connect the new definitions to the technical standards and infrastructure needed for widespread adoption—much as it previously did with VAST (Video Ad Serving Template) and OpenRTB. The RMT Standard is not a paper exercise; it is designed to be programmatically implementable, meaning demand-side platforms (DSPs), supply-side platforms (SSPs), and ad servers could eventually integrate these taxonomies directly into their bidding and measurement logic.

For marketers and agencies, the benefits are tangible. A unified classification would enable apples-to-apples comparison of video campaigns across platforms, reducing the manual gymnastics currently required to reconcile metrics from YouTube, TikTok, Hulu, and Roku. Media planners could allocate budgets with greater precision, knowing that a “view” in social video meets the same criteria as one in CTV. On the sell-side, publishers and broadcasters would gain a clearer designation of their inventory, potentially unlocking premium CPMs by aligning with recognized formats. The standard also holds promise for ad fraud detection, as consistent definitions make anomalous traffic patterns easier to spot across otherwise siloed environments.