January 23 was a momentous day in history. What was said and by whom will have significant, long-term beneficial impact on online advertising. It happened in Atlanta, although not all participants could make it on time due to bad weather at the airport.

Representatives from search engines (Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Become, Shop.com), retailers (Sierra Trading Post, Red Envelope, Bare Necessities, CompUSA, Cutter & Buck, Coldwater, REI), agencies (Rimm-Kaufman Group, Performics, Mercent, Mars) and the NRF (NRF’s ARTS, the Association for Retail Technology Standards) all met to discuss establishing an industry standard for describing products for online SKU-based advertising and the comparison engines.

During the two-hour meeting, retailers and engines alike shared their frustration at the lack of a common platform for describing products and receiving back advertising reports.

The most important outcome of the meeting was the decision to move forward towards an industry standard for describing products online using the expertise and process of the NRF’s ARTS.

The group next plans to meet in Menlo Park on February 27 to begin work on a specification.

This standardization effort is newsworthy for several reasons. Such a standard would:

• allow retailers, both large and small, to advertise online more easily
• help the engines by increasing their advertising base
• help consumers by allowing retailers to communicate a richer set of product information to the engines which would then
• facilitate improved product searching and comparing

The meeting was also interesting in that a diverse set of organizations with widely different interests all agreed that the current situation was far from good and that an industry standard would help greatly.

The online retail community needs to know that this is happening. And they need to get involved in the standard building process.