MUMBAI: The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the not-for-profit industry body, has introduced a credit policy and accreditation process for all agencies dealing with online advertisements.

The policy claims to have garnered the support of leading online publishers in India including Rediff.com, Yahoo! India, Indiatimes.com and Sify.com.

IAMAI president Dr Subho Ray is hopeful that the new policy will bring in some norms and standards to the relationship between online publishers and agencies which is currently bilateral and haphazard.

 
According to an official announcement the policy consists of three aspects:

a) A common credit policy for all accredited agencies
b) An accreditation process
c) A process of recovery of over due payments from agencies

Under the Policy, a 60 day credit would be extended by affiliated publishers to all accredited agencies with a 30 day window for negotiation, reconciliation and settlement. The process of accreditation has been deliberately kept simple and gratis to encourage agencies to be a part of this process. The policy comes into force from 28 March 2007 after the one-month window given to agencies for accreditation expires.

 
While the online advertisement business is very small as compared to other media, it has been estimated that dues over 90 days amount to 25 per cent of the revenues in some cases leading to a cash flow problem for online publishers. It was, therefore felt prudent to establish some basic "housekeeping" norms for the benefit of all the stakeholders in the value chain of online advertisement business, adds the release.
As it exists today, the policy would regulate the relationship and payment schedules between online publishers and agencies only much like the process followed by the INS. However, if the policy works out successfully in the first stage, IAMAI would seriously consider taking the next step of setting up certain norms supporting the agencies' recovery from advertisers.