Yahoo7’s Justin Orchard + Nine Entertainment’s Nathan Powell fill council co-chair roles with IAB

IAB Australia has today announced the appointment of Yahoo7’s Justin Orchard (left) as co-chair of the standards and guidelines council, while Nathan Powell (right) from Nine Entertainment will take up a co-chair role on the video council.

Orchard is head of sales operations at Yahoo7 and Nathan Powell is director of sales – digital product at Nine Entertainment.

The appointments mark another phase of the Refresh program being undertaken by IAB Australia, with both Councils currently undertaking a review of their purpose and plans for the second half of 2017.

Says Vijay Solanki, CEO, IAB Australia: “As the IAB builds more momentum and the Refresh continues, I’m excited to have both Justin and Nathan step up and take the lead for both standards and guidelines and video respectively.  Video continues to grow and digital standards have never been more important for our industry, from reviewing the new ad unit portfolio through to addressing adblocking.”

Solanki thanked the exiting Council Chairs, John Moffat from Fairfax and Suzie Cardwell of MCN, for their exceptional service to the IAB and industry.  Moffat had chaired the IAB Australia standards and guidelines council for almost five years and Cardwell has been involved in the IAB Australia Video Council since its launch in 2014.

The IAB Australia standards and guidelines council are currently working on adblocking guidelines and will be hosting a digital ad operations conference next month to support the Australian AdOps community.  Next quarter it will be working on the proposed overhaul of the IAB standard ad unit portfolio.