Granted, the IAB’s Washington, D.C. lobbying shop, opened last year, is a small operation. Now the IAB is in the process of hiring a second person for the office. No doubt IAB wants to protect the data collection and micro-targeting digital turf of its members. Former Tacoda and Time Warner exec. Dave Morgan perhaps revealed why the political stakes are so high for IAB members such as Google, AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, Disney, CBS, NY Times, Washington Post, etc. in Media Post. As Morgan explained, “.. Everybody now knows that data is the fuel for growth. Everyone is starting to mine it and make it available to third parties…The big four (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL’s Platform A) are all opening up their networks and systems to leverage third-party data; so are the ad servers like WPP’s 24/7 Real Media; and so are the ad networks…We’re moving into a wild, wild west in monetizing real-time marketing data, and we’re going to need many more people that know how to do this…As we see this data take on more value and play a bigger role in our industry, the public policy implications are going to become much more pronounced.”
