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Follow UsNEW DELHI: The Internet and Mobile Association of India,
The Policy has support from all leading online publishers in India including Rediff.com, Yahoo! India, Indiatimes.com and Sify.com.
The policy that consists of three aspects, includes a common credit policy for all accredited agencies, an accreditation process and also a process of recovery of over due payments from advertising agencies.
Under the policy, a 60-day credit would be extended by affiliated publishers to all accredited agencies with a 30-day window for negotiation, reconciliation and settlement. The process of accreditation has been deliberately kept simple to encourage agencies to be a part of this process.
The policy comes into force from 28th March 2007 after the one-month window given to agencies for accreditation expires.
While the online advertisement business is very small as compared to other media, it has been estimated that dues over 90 days amount to 25 per cent of the revenues in some cases leading to a cash flow problem for online publishers. It was, therefore felt prudent to establish some basic “housekeeping” norms for the benefit of all the stakeholders in the value chain of online advertisement business.
As it exists today, the policy would regulate the relationship and payment schedules between online publishers and agencies only much like the process followed by the INS. However, if the Policy works out successfully in the first stage, IAMAI would seriously considering taking next step of setting up certain norms supporting the agencies’ recovery from advertisers.
Commenting on the initiative, Dr Subho Ray, President, IAMAI, was hopeful that the new policy will bring in some norms and standards to the relationship between online publishers and agencies which is currently bilateral and haphazard.
IAMAI has said that credit policy to agencies and timely recovery of online advertisement payment is an issue of concern with the online publishers. While the support of agencies are critical for expanding the size of online advertisement, it was felt necessary to have some common guidelines governing extension of credit and accreditation of agencies.
Guidelines
All digital agencies, digital businesses of an agency and others have to be accredited to the IAMAI
All members of IAMAI would be automatically accredited
All other agencies would have to approach IAMAI for accreditation
The following process would apply for accreditation:
An agency will approach IAMAI with the request providing information on the profile of the business or its promoters; current and future estimates of business and current clients.
The request will be vetted by the Online Publishers’ Committee at IAMAI and its decision duly notified to the agency
There will be no fee for accreditation
No publisher would undertake extend credit to a non-accredited agency. Accreditation from no other agency will be applicable for advertising with online publishers
A one-month window would be given to all agencies from the date of announcement of these guidelines to accredit with IAMAI
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