IAB “Compliance” or “Certified” - the difference

The words “Compliance” and “Certified” look suspiciously similar: but they don’t mean the same thing.

When Spotify ended its relationship with the IAB at the beginning of 2024, the company said:

“While Megaphone, Chartable and S4P are not officially IAB certified at this time, all three platforms are compliant to the IAB v2.1 standard.”

So - what’s the difference between IAB compliant and IAB Certified?

In 2018, Amit Shetty, Sr. Director, Video & Audio Products, IAB Tech Lab, told us: “Our certification program is how companies can prove that they are compliant with the podcast measurement guidelines. That is where we have auditors look at the implementations in detail and run tests to determine whether they are satisfying the requirements of the guidelines. Companies that are certified will get a seal and will be listed on the website.”

And, Industry Lead at the IAB Jennifer Lane told us: “We are not involved with the reporting or measurement that companies utilize. Unless certified, we have not examined their practices.”

So, “IAB Certification” is a detailed process, and ensures that the IAB have checked and verified each podcast hosting company’s code for the various items that they’re certifying for (which can be downloads, but can also be ad delivery - whether an ad was actually delivered to a listener).

“IAB Compliant” is none of the above. If your company wants to claim that you’re IAB Compliant, then you’re free to do so. Nobody checks. And, while you might believe that you are compliant, since nobody has checked - least of all, the IAB - you might be entirely wrong.

In the US, where the IAB is based, there is the concept of “passing off”, which Wikipedia defines like this:

The law of passing off prevents one trader from misrepresenting goods or services as being the goods and services of another, and also prevents a trader from holding out his or her goods or services as having some association or connection with another when this is not true.

The use of “compliant to IAB standards” or “IAB compliant” is, in our opinion, the definition of “passing off” to make it appear that there is an association with the IAB’s certification procedures that check for compliance.

Further, the IAB’s name is US registered trademark number 3967007. So, not only does the law of passing off apply, but so does registered trademark law. To use the IAB’s trademark to suggest that you’re in some way compliant with the guidelines - but not have been properly certified - would appear, in our opinion, to be misuse of the IAB’s registered trademark.

We are unclear why the IAB does not exercise its legal rights to protect its name, and ensure that podcast measurement tools that have not been IAB Certified do not use the IAB name.

Why’s all this important? A tale from history

Back in November 2018 - before IAB certification was a thing - ESPN Podcasts released their monthly podcast figures, quoting “43.6m IAB compliant downloads” from RawVoice, and “6.3m US unique audience” from Podtrac.

The use of two data sources is worth highlighting. Podtrac also measured ESPN’s downloads, and claimed ESPN Podcasts did 59.7m downloads in the same month - a figure 27% higher than RawVoice. At the time, both Podtrac and RawVoice claimed that they were “IAB compliant”: but there was a disparity of 27% between the two.

The IAB Podcast Measurement Guidelines offer technical guidance, says the IAB, “in order to reduce the discrepancies currently seen across podcast publishers and tech vendors.”

Ryan Granner, Director, Digital Audio Operations for ESPN, confirmed that both Rawvoice and Podtrac were measuring virtually the same data. He told Podnews: “Rawvoice is measuring every download in every show we have available, but the shows that are included in the Rawvoice download number which are not included in our Podtrac numbers wouldn’t amount to even a rounding error to the aggregate numbers we publish.”

In spite of claiming it was “IAB compliant “and then some”, Podtrac did not use server logs to measure downloads, and instead measured by using a redirect mechanism. Robert Freeland, CTO at Podtrac, told us: ”The IAB standards present a reasonable “starting point” algorithm, but they specifically allow for more sophisticated algorithms like ours. The IAB’s simplistic algorithm at least gets everyone within 50%."

ESPN’s Ryan Granner was clear that the company favoured RawVoice for total download numbers. “We have a number of data sources that measure our podcasts and believe that Podtrac gives the best available measurement of audience size and Rawvoice provides the most accurate download measurement that is compliant with IAB standards. Rawvoice has access to our server logs and is able confirm everything meets the criteria set by the IAB.”

But, since both were not certified at the time - and merely “compliant” - both returned wildly different numbers.

Both Podtrac and RawVoice are now fully IAB Certified.