W3C

– DRAFT –
Improving Web Advertising BG

13 September 2022

Attendees

Present
abissuel, Alan, AramZS, bkardell_, charlieharrison, ErikAnderson, eselman_criteo, GarrettJohnson, gendler_, jeff, kris_chapman, Laszlo_Gombos, lbasdevant, mjv, npd, risako, russStringham, vinod, wbaker, wseltzer
Regrets
-
Chair
-
Scribe
Alan

Meeting minutes

Introductions

<wseltzer> [slideset: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1R67R5Pd9NL88s5vn51Y3k50uP7P59YKidSpW0uYjZHo/edit#slide=id.p ]

<kleber> alextcone: So you're still representing IAB Tech Lab here, though your affiliation has changed in other contexts?

Wendy: Background of group's activities
… A lot of the work has moved into incubation - WICG and Privacy submissions in 2020
… PATCG, Fed Id adn Anti-Fraud started in 2021 with some items
… Last month started Charter Review for PAT WG - the formal path for the work coming out of these discussions

[table of W3C Group functions]
… discussion on various groups, licensing, etc.
… BG is a more open structire and tehn we send the work to a more formal structure

David: The top right - CG - doesn't produce a normative spec, that has to go to a WG right?

Wendy: Thanks, I'll update the slide in real time to reflect that.
… A WG creates a spec that has had full review from the Membership and horizontal review

Kris: When 2 different WGs come up with specs that have different points of view, how is that resolved?

Wendy: We have the TAG that looks at it architecturally. If the two serve different functions they may say both are OK, otherwise they may try to harmonize them.

Juan: Do CG speccs go through the TAG?

Wendy: A CG can ask for TAG review as they encourage early submissions

#############

Wendy: That is the question of what on-going role do we want for this group.
… If we look at the set of places things have gone, there are groups open to developing the specs started here.
… They are better places for spec focused development.
… I put together this on "what's next"

[What's next slide]
… We could do review, look at questions on ecosystem effect, what might change to it
… How should we anticipate and respond to those actions
… What do you want to do??

Charlie: As someone who's developing specs in some of the other groups. One thing that would be helpful is to get feedback on the various groups.
… How will they address the situations. What kind of testing is needed, etc.
… Just a suggestion, more feedback is useful.

Brian: We spent the first part discussing what we might do. Those are now on the way, we could use input on what works and the impact.

Aram: It would be great to havve this group generate reports for feedback on how the various activiites are being used.
… Would be great to get that feedback in a more formal way that we could work with.

Kris: In echoing the same, one of the things that's being proposed people are focused on that.
… The BG could talk about how to use these things together, we need that coordinations.

Wendall: These are some comments I've made earlier. We use this because it gives us IPR protection.
… The conversations here are held differently. We're glad to work on some of the experiments but they are expensive.
… The idea we have is that we appreciated some down time, maybe once a month, once a quarter with a full agenda would be great.
… PAT WG is doing once a month and that is working.
… We should try to have a full agenda and a timing that works for it.

Brian: From the adtech side, we're finding it difficult to find collaborators.
… We can provide some insight, but we need others with different sides.
… The BG could provide a coordination place.

[Wendy updates slides in real time]

Wendy: The next thing any of these require is folks to work on them. In a WG the next step would be a call for editors.
… None of these is a spec, but each might have a project with it. If anyone wants to raise a hand here to find others to work on one of these items, or add something.

Thomas: Make it possible for people to understand what all the proposals are, provide way for new people to understand what has happened

Lionel Basdevant: ***********

Wendy: Avoid duplication. If we do a review it would be both within the group, collected here and not aiming to do work twice.

Kris: One of the things I do for SF is to make things readable and how they coordinate. I'll talk to SF about making that work public and using it as a jumping off point.

Wendy: Fantastic. If others are doing the same, we could build a joint documentaround this.
… We could seet some of that up in Github to allow collaboration.
… We don't need to get the names right now but we can send a call out to the mailing list as well.
… I heard some +1s around the room, do we think the first set is feedback on the proposals
… or a mapping of opportunity for business users
… to see how things might fit together and explanitory documents

Vinod: In talking to other groups, there are folks outside of W3C that come to mind. I think coordination and collaboration with these groups could be beneficial.

Wendy: We currently have some informal relationships with some of these, some of our Members have relationships.
… Some I know and talk to, others I don't so if you could put the list in IRC it would be appreciated.

Aram: Relative to working with these, from the PAT CG that's part of our mission. The BG should talk about how the work impacts other.
… Getting them to give us consistent feedback would be good.
… We tried to formalize this in the Charter, but we need to get them involved in the CG and here.

<vinod> Some of the industry bodies that have certifications / guidelines / standards in place: IAB Tech Lab, Media Rating Council, Trustworthy Accountability Group, IAB UK, World Federation of Advertisers (GARM).

Alex: I just wanted to note that the Geotech has the need to work together. I think Tech Lab and ICU have a need to reach out.

Vinod: I was a part of that and agree.

Wendy: One of the functions we've tried to do is be a pointer to other resources in W3C and where their interest might fit.

<kris_chapman> https://gitmind.com/app/flowchart/08a12084067

Kris: In the Feb ID CG one of the things we've been trying to do is develop a decision tree for developers. Something similar for the ad work would be useful and help with coordination.

<alextcone> For the record: I mentioned that Rachit Sharma from IAB Tech Lab, who is here this week at TPAC, is organizing feedback from the IAB Tech Lab community on various ads related proposals.

<kleber> +1 to Kris's decision trees! I am envious!

Wendy: Sounds like a great idea and if we could get some skill sharing to build them it would be helpful.

Brian: I think there are bus folks that see the trade press but need a mapping to help them get involved in the conversation.

Wendy: I'd like to take these ideas and circulate them to see if we can get some folks to sign up to develop drafts, etc.
… If someone wanted to start working on this and share it with the group it woulld be welcome.
… One of the questions we tackled early on is when do we seek consensus, whos endorsement it would have, etc.
… We have diverse opinions, a range of views and in the work.
… It would be interesting to see what we could drive to consensus. Where we could use issue tags to flag disagreements
… Think the only way to do it is try and see what happens

Kris: I'll volunteer to do a flowchart, but we need to decide what use case to see where to start

Wendy: So ideas for an initial use case

Kris: I'll assume ad serving on a use case

Brian: I agree and will help

Wendy: Thanks, let me know what resources you need to start doing that

<Zakim> jeff, you wanted to comment on consensus documents

Jeff: Since you raised the question on what kind of consensus document you could write, I wanted to throw out one idea
… You could have one on the state of Web Advertising in 2023 that could capture the various groups ideas

Wendy: That fits with docuemnts and explainers notions we discussed

<jeff> s/group ideas/group ideas and embeds in the document a respectful discussion of differing points of view/

David: I was curious, I see you mentioned PAT CG. Is it "graduating" to a WG so it won't have open access?

Aram: It is a second group, the CG will continue exploration, the WG is to do the formal work to create Recommendations
… The CG will continue to focus on the initial documents that could be referred to the WG and continue to engage the community

David: Is there any association with the PING or does that wait?

<npd> PING will help with horizontal review, review privacy considerations of any standards-track deliverables of the PATWG

Aram: There is overlap but they do vertical reviews that we would want to leverage

Wendy: A WG is open to W3C Members and IEs. We aim to get input from all angles and input mechanisms.
… We do calls for reviews by folks that could be affected by a spec
… We'll still have plenty of ways for folks to still be involved.

Brian: I like Jeff's suggestion that we put together a ducment on the state of web advertising in 2023. Not sure of how to do it but I'd be interested on workin on such a thing.

Karl: I'd like to volunteer to bring some prospectives to the reports.
… We (Snake Nation) work with a lot of brands. There are some key players that should be interested so I would offer that we should highlight Group Black as someone to look at.

Wendy: That's a great suggestion. How any of these technologies work for customers, users and creators. Some connections there would be helpful.

<npd> that sounds like a great invitation to present to a future BG meeting, so we can hear about their work and use cases

Wendy: I want to encourage all of you who are interested and aren't in the group yet, please click the Join button and you'll be pinged.

Wendy: That was a great brainstorm and thanks for the interest in pursuing some of those.
… I'll do some calls for volunteers to work on it. W3C is driven by our participants so we need folks to engage to get it started.
… review of sessions at TPAC that might be of interest.

<kleber> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Iq7i2Rb9MPVddrt3AgHZlpt6ttLY7QenJLkbFqlHqMc/edit?pli=1

Kris: Right after this the Fed ID CG is meeting. If you're not familiar with this you might want to attend.

Charlie: There's a meeting on attribution reporting on Friday

<npd> ben: IP address privacy session, and fenced frames, likely to be of interest to businesses

AOB

Brian: I've been saying that I've been working on advertising for a long time, have seen some things that bothered me and I appreciate what this group is trying to do.

<gendler_> Big thank you to Wendy for her organization of this group!

Brian: I think the potential future might be interesting and is a worthy case. Something that works for everyone!

<alextcone> +1 on the shout out to Wendy

Wendy: Send us out with the charge of the mission to make the web work well for everyone.

<npd> +1 for working on developing advertising infrastructure that isn't invasive, intrusive or harmful

Wendy: I'll put up a schedule that fits the suggestion Wendall made of montly calls.

<sarahcortes> thanks Wendy

rrsagent set log public

<wseltzer> [adjourned]

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 192 (Tue Jun 28 16:55:30 2022 UTC).

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Maybe present: Alex, Aram, Brian, Charlie, David, Juan, Karl, Kris, Thomas, Wendall, Wendy