Improving Web Advertising Business Group

The Improving Web Advertising Business Group is a subcommittee of the World Wide Web Consortium with a focus on online advertising. In January 2020, Google encouraged advertising technology companies to join the group as a way to participate in the company's Privacy Sandbox initiative. The IWABG was formed in 2017; as of 2022 it had 412 participants.

Structure

The IWABG was formed in 2017 and is chaired by Wendy Seltzer., it had 355 participants.
IWABG participants attend periodical conference calls and collaborate on GitHub.

Googleʻs Privacy Sandbox initiative

In January 2020, Google encouraged advertising technology companies to join or contact the IWABG as a way to participate in the company's Privacy Sandbox initiative.

Allegations of dominance by Google

Member organizations in the IWABG each get one vote, but can send any number of representatives to participate., there were 258 participants in the group, of which 33 were Google employees. In August 2020, a group of IWABG members wrote an open letter to the advisory board of the World Wide Web Consortium, expressing concern that "a disparity in organizational size" was preventing the W3C from fulfilling its purpose of equally representing all web stakeholders.