IAB.com sold for $75,000 (to Google and Yahoo) and donated to the Interactive Advertising Bureau

The domain name IAB.com was donated to the Interactive Advertising Bureau that was using iab.net as it’s official website up until now.

Leading digital advertising and technology companies BrightRoll, Collective, Google, MediaMath, Rubicon Project, sovrn (formerly Federated Media’s programmatic business), Turn and Yahoo announced a charitable donation to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) of the domain IAB.com, worth $75,000. The companies collectively purchased and presented the domain name certificate to the IAB during the first general session at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting on Sunday, February 9.

This clearly displays how advertising companies recognize the power of .com.

The domain name was sold by a California man that bought it in 2007 for $67,250 at a Snapnames/Network Solutions expired auction.

The top-level domain enables the IAB to enhance its global brand presence online to generate greater awareness for the organization and its work with member companies to develop industry-wide standards and field research for digital advertising. The eight participating companies are members of the IAB and the donation represents collective support for the organization’s dedication to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace.

“This is a magnanimous gesture and will make a qualitative difference in IAB’s own presence online,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB. “With this donation, these member companies are generously helping us own our category domain, and helping hundreds of thousands of media and marketing professionals and consumers who each year seek guidance from the IAB via our web site.”

BrightRoll “IAB plays a critical role in defining standards to validate and measure the performance of digital advertising. Their continued dedication is helping drive the convergence of TV and digital media and enabling companies such as BrightRoll to develop innovative technology to push the category forward,” said Tod Sacerdoti, CEO and founder, BrightRoll.

Collective “The IAB is an essential leadership organization responsible for best practices, technology standards and policies that enable the growth of the digital advertising industry. We are pleased to join the other participating companies in supporting the IAB’s vital role here in the U.S. and internationally,” said Joe Apprendi, CEO, Collective.

MediaMath “For nearly 20 years, the IAB has been a powerful agent of change in our industry — promoting education, innovation, collaboration and standards within the market. During a time when the online advertising industry is surging, and more marketing dollars are shifting into digital, it is more valuable and critical than ever before to have such a respected and dedicated partner, and we’re proud to support them,” said Joe Zawadzki, CEO, MediaMath.

Rubicon Project “The IAB has been helping define and accelerate our ever-changing industry on a global stage since 1996. Rubicon Project is enormously grateful for the work Randall and his team do to help foster the adoption and innovation of advertising automation technologies that are transforming the way advertising is bought and sold globally,” said Frank Addante, CEO, Founder and Chief Product Architect, Rubicon Project.

sovrn “With the dramatic rise in programmatic advertising, it’s important for companies like ours to work closely with organizations like the IAB to ensure that publishers, advertisers, and technology providers in our ecosystem comply with industry standards. Because we have one of the largest and most diverse programmatic platforms in the world, our partners feel confident that our use of IAB standards help us deliver the high quality of advertising they have come to expect from us,” said Walter Knapp, CEO, sovrn.

Turn “Turn is proud to support the IAB in its mission to standardize digital advertising and enhance consumer understanding of its benefits. This donation plays an important role in helping to elevate the brand and voice of a key advocate for the future of the advertising industry,” said Bill Demas, president and CEO, Turn.

Yahoo “The IAB has been instrumental in bringing advertisers, publishers and partners together to outline the practices and standards that set our industry up for growth. We look forward to continued work with the IAB to lead the conversations that are critical to our industry, our advertisers, and the hundreds of millions of people globally who engage with the content we create,” said Ned Brody, Head of Americas, Yahoo.

About the IAB The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 600 leading media and technology companies that are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit iab.net.

About BrightRoll BrightRoll is the only independent and unified programmatic video advertising platform for reaching audiences across web, mobile and connected TV. The company powers digital video advertising for the world’s largest brands, including more than 80 of the top 100 US advertisers and 18 of the top 20 advertising technology companies. The platform enables advertisers to reach 4 in 5 video viewers online and consistently ranks among the top two video ad platforms in ads served. As a result, BrightRoll technology collects and analyzes hundreds of billions of data points monthly enabling real-time decisions that drive ROI for advertisers. To learn more, visit www.brightroll.com.

About Collective Collective is a leading data-driven, programmatic advertising company that connects brand marketers to audiences with personalized ad experiences across screens and formats. Collective’s unified view of the consumer platform breaks down traditional media silos and enables brands to control audience reach & frequency and choreograph messaging across TV, PC, tablet and smartphone devices. Headquartered in New York with offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London and Bangalore. Collective is backed by Accel Partners, Cox Media Group, Greycroft Partners, iNovia Capital and Samsung Ventures. To learn more about Collective, visit www.collective.com.

About Google Google is a global technology leader focused on improving the ways people connect with information. Google’s innovations in web search and advertising have made its website a top internet property and its brand one of the most recognized in the world.

About MediaMath Based in New York with 12 locations across five continents, MediaMath develops digital marketing technology and offers deep industry expertise, enabling marketers to connect with consumers individually and at scale across the entirety of the world’s digital media. MediaMath’s TerminalOne Marketing Operating System” enables marketers to customize their own technology infrastructure and leverage their data and industry data in the planning, execution, optimization and analysis of digital marketing programs, resulting in smarter decisions that grow their business. Powering the operations for thousands of marketers, including those representing 55% of the Fortune 100, TerminalOne enables its users to drive transformative business results across the entire digital ecosystem.

About Rubicon Project Rubicon Project pioneered advertising automation and is now doing for advertising what companies like NASDAQ did for stock trading. The company’s automated advertising platform is used by more than 500 of the world’s premium publishers and applications to transact with over 100,000 advertising brands globally.

A company driven by innovation, Rubicon Project has engineered the Advertising Automation Cloud, one of the largest real-time cloud and Big Data computing systems, processing trillions of transactions within milliseconds each month. According to comScore Dec 2013, Rubicon Project reaches more than 95 percent of U.S. Internet users per month and is ranked #1 in reach.

Headquartered in Los Angeles, Rubicon Project has ten offices across the globe including New York, San Francisco, Paris, Hamburg, Sydney and London. Learn more at www.rubiconproject.com

About sovrn sovrn is a programmatic advertising and publisher platform company based in Boulder, CO with offices in San Francisco, CA and New York, NY. With almost 20,000 publishers on the platform, representing over 2 million websites, sovrn provides publishers across the independent web with the tools, services, and analytics to help them grow their site, engage their audience, and make more money. Our RTB (real-time bidding) infrastructure powers one of the largest global ad exchanges and allows us to offer publishers a complete range of monetization solutions including display, video, and mobile across both domestic and international, as well as private marketplaces and data-driven yield optimization.

About Turn Turn delivers real-time insights that transform the way leading advertising agencies and enterprises make marketing decisions. Our integrated cloud platform enables data management, cross-channel advertising, and advanced analytics from a single login, along with point-and-click access to more than 120 integrated technology partners. Turn is headquartered in Silicon Valley and provides its products and services worldwide. For more information, visit turn.com or follow @turnplatform.

About Yahoo Yahoo is focused on making the world’s daily habits inspiring and entertaining. By creating highly personalized experiences for our users, we keep people connected to what matters most to them, across devices and around the world. In turn, we create value for advertisers by connecting them with the audiences that build their businesses. Yahoo is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and has offices located throughout the Americas, Asia Pacific (APAC) and the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regions. For more information, visit the pressroom (pressroom.yahoo.net) or the company’s blog (yahoo.tumblr.com).