Canadian Internet advertisers and marketers now have their own representative body: The Internet Advertising Bureau of Canada.

Launched last month in Toronto, the new organization is said to speak for a segment of the advertising industry that, up till now, has had no collective voice.

John Chaplin, president of interACT Research Communications Company, has been named first president of IAB Canada. He says his first challenge will be to try to enhance client perceptions of the medium’s general effectiveness and help them establish the right proportion of Internet advertising in their marketing mix.

‘There’s been no accountability, no way of knowing the advertising return on investment,’ says Chaplin. ‘If the Internet is a viable commercial medium, how do you integrate it with marketing plans and use Web pages?’

He says the iab wants to bring structure to the industry: standardizing measurement of the Internet, standardizing ad banner sizes and creating guidelines for the use of talent on the Internet – a topic of keen interest to the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (actra) and the Union des Artistes (uda).

IAB Canada will not only represent companies engaged in advertising on the Internet, but will also look at the size of the market and its potential, assess the effectiveness of advertising banners and spearhead professional development.

The organization has a formal affiliation with the IAB in the u.s. to provide members a context in which to compare Canadian Internet marketing and advertising practices.

Among the charter members of IAB Canada are Internet publishers, ad agencies, advertisers, media measurement companies and content providers as well as the Association of Canadian Advertising.