The IAB's Greg Stuart told ad agencies that they must get creative to online publishers according to established deadlines. Who will blink first?

Did you all hear it? Greg Stuart, the CEO of the Interactive Ad Bureau (IAB) has suggested that online publishers start taking a hard line with agencies that consistently turn in creative days and sometimes weeks after a campaign's originally planned start date.

According to a story in the trades last Friday, major online publishers such as ABCNews.com, AOL, BusinessWeek Online, Forbes.com, MSN, MTV Networks, TVGuide.com and Yahoo will all start insisting that agencies get creative to them according to the deadlines that are established with agencies upfront, usually during the proposal and negotiation process.

What is being proposed is that agencies and their clients be held financially liable for media against which late creative was to run.

Some people may not realize that a clause in the IAB/AAAAs Standard Terms & Conditions version 2.0 already stipulates a penalty to agencies for late creative. The last sentence of Section 9, paragraph A states:

"If Advertising Materials are late, Advertiser is still responsible for the media purchased pursuant to IO."

Late creative is a regular issue for publishers when dealing with agencies. When creative and contracts are late, inventory is lost and placements become more difficult. Though one might not always realize it, our clients aren't the only ones out there in the market place. Particularly this year, there are a lot of other marketers buying media. One cannot expect the material aspects of a buy to remain exactly as they were when a publisher was first contacted for a proposal. Space and material close dates, like we have in print and broadcast, need to be instituted in order to prevent the pain and suffering we all experience -- marketers, agencies, and publishers -- when inventory and time are lost.

Why it doesn't happen

The reason no one has been enforcing this particular aspect of the advertising material's clause of section IX is that, for a number of years, publishers had the inventory to allow a little flexibility with start dates. If the online advertising sector is really going to see between $15 and $16 billion dollars this year, publishers -- particularly the niche targeted or highly branded ones -- are going to experience a dearth of inventory.

Also, publishers are anxious to get certain advertisers on their sites. They don't want to risk losing a marquee client by highlighting or exercising a late materials penalty.

But if there are advertisers out there who can get their materials in on time, given the tightening of the marketplace, those publishers are now at liberty to go after them in lieu of the chronically tardy.

Another reason it doesn't happen is because both agencies and publishers often times attach so many addenda and riders to the current Terms & Conditions that -- as a standard -- they are practically rendered null. Standards are only standards when there is categorical adherence. Reciprocal compliance is a must if we are ever going to get anywhere. This means all of the Ts & Cs.

And finally, agencies are afraid of their clients. Agencies can't say no to any request, no matter how beyond the pale of reason, for fear of getting fired. In an industry that has made as one of the legs it stands on a competitive value proposition of commoditizing media rather than the quality of the ideas and solutions it delivers, being able to buy media for the client under any conditions and as inexpensively as possible, as absurd and irresponsible as those conditions might be, becomes tantamount to top-quality media planning.

Why it should happen

Adherence to the late materials component of the advertising materials paragraph of the Ts & Cs is good for all of us. Publishers can accurately manage inventory and predict cash flow. Agencies stop burning cycles and eroding already narrow efficiencies by no longer having to go back and renegotiate placements, rates and inventory over and over again with each new pushed-back start date. And clients actually get advertising in the marketplace with important media during the schedule planned for the rest of their media.

Unless clients really still do not take online advertising seriously as a marketing channel, and so its role in the overall communications plan is nominal or irrelevant, it should matter to them that the online is in place -- and in the right place -- on time.

If an agency planned a schedule for network TV, the schedule was locked, and then the client said "oh, materials are going to be a few weeks late, but not sure which day," do you really think the network would hold that inventory open for them without either charging them for that inventory or selling it to another advertiser?

Part of why clients and agencies get away with doing this is that we as an industry have let them. Publishers don't hold agencies responsible and agencies don't hold clients responsible. If we don't take ourselves seriously enough to adhere to our own rules, why should anyone else?

Jim Meskauskas is media strategies editor for iMedia Connection.