Ad Campaigns
IAB Tech Lab launches ‘Ad Format Idol’ to standardise CTV ad innovations
Mumbai: IAB Tech Lab, the global digital advertising standards body, unveils its latest initiative, “Ad Format Idol,” to define and standardise emerging Connected TV (CTV) ad formats. As the CTV landscape experiences rapid growth, the project targets the adoption of consistent ad formats across platforms, enabling ‘build once, serve everywhere’ solutions for the industry.
IAB Tech Lab CEO, Anthony Katsur stated, “CTV is experiencing explosive growth, but we’re still in the early innings of figuring out how to make it work at scale. The industry is full of new ad formats that show promise but lack the technical standards to take off. ‘Ad Format Idol’ is about cutting through the noise, finding what works, and giving it the structure needed to thrive. As we have done for early web advertising and with digital video, we want to set up the whole CTV ecosystem to succeed.”
The ‘Ad Format Idol’ initiative invites digital advertising stakeholders to submit successful CTV ad formats from 22 October to 22 January 2025. A task force from the Advanced TV Commit Group will evaluate the entries, while the advanced TV and programmatic supply chain working groups will then update specifications to reflect the winning formats. The aim is to address key challenges identified in IAB’s latest report on CTV ad format growth and standardisation.
IAB, VP, media center, Cintia Gabilan added, “With 75 per cent of CTV spend being transacted in programmatic already, advertisers need standardisation to scale investments and buying efficiency, and ‘Ad Format Idol’ is set to address that. This initiative will help overcome fragmentation and ensure these formats can thrive across the CTV ecosystem.”
The selected formats will debut at upcoming industry events, starting with Tech Lab’s International Summit in London on 5 November 2024, and ‘I Want My CTV’ in New York on 5 December 2024. The initiative will also feature prominently at IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting, NewFronts, and Video Leadership Summit in 2025, providing insights into the evolution of CTV advertising.
IAB Tech Lab board director & GumGum chief technology officer, Ken Weiner emphasised, “We’re looking for ad formats that have real potential to scale across different channels and streaming services and change consumers’ advertising experience on CTV.”
NATIONAL: Amazon Ads has laid out a sharply tech-led vision for the advertising industry in 2026, arguing that artificial intelligence, streaming TV and creator partnerships will combine to turn brand building into a more precise, performance-driven business.
At the heart of the shift, the company says, is the fusion of AI with Amazon’s vast trove of shopping, browsing and streaming signals, allowing advertisers to move beyond blunt reach metrics to campaigns designed around real customer behaviour.
“The future of advertising is not about reaching more people, but the right people with messages that resonate,” said Amazon Ads India head and vice president Girish Prabhu. “By combining AI with deep customer insights, we help brands move from broadcasting campaigns to having meaningful conversations wherever audiences spend their time.”
One of the biggest changes, according to Amazon Ads, will be the collapse of the wall between media planning and creative development. Retail media, powered by first-party data, is increasingly shaping everything from brand discovery to final purchase, pushing marketers to design campaigns around audience insight rather than internal instinct.
AI is also moving from a support tool to a creative engine. Agentic AI, which automates and accelerates production, is expected to make high-quality creative accessible even to small businesses, compressing weeks of work into hours and giving challengers the ability to compete with larger brands on speed and scale.
Behind the scenes, AI-driven analytics will take on a bigger role in campaign optimisation, identifying patterns, spotting opportunities and recommending actions that would previously have required teams of analysts.
Streaming TV is another big battleground. With India’s video streaming audience now above 600 million and connected TV users at 129.2 million in 2025, advertisers are set to treat streaming not just as a branding channel but as a performance engine, measured increasingly by sales, sign-ups and bookings rather than just reach.
Finally, Amazon Ads sees creators and contextual advertising reshaping how brands tell stories. Creators will act less like influencers and more like long-term partners, while scene-aware ads on streaming platforms will allow brands to insert hyper-relevant offers into the flow of what viewers are watching.
Taken together, Amazon Ads argues, these shifts mark a move towards advertising that is both more human and more measurable, where AI handles the complexity, and creativity does the persuading.
