To help ensure accurate online advertising impression counts during audit processes, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and ABC Electronic (ABCE) today announced the launch of an expanded global Spiders & Bots List. The new list, for the first time, combines IAB's advertising-related spiders and bots Ad List with ABCE's Content Traffic List related to robotic site traffic, to help determine the impact that non-human activity may have on ad serving.

"The new global list will help to provide the most effective method of filtering out all non-human activity - affecting both ad impression counts and site traffic counts - enabling site owners to present transparent, accurate and robust auditable data relating to counts of variable user interaction," according to the announcement.

"By working jointly with ABCE, we will be able to expand the watch list to include spiders and bots more widely used in Europe, and together we will be able to offer broader protection to thousands of websites," Greg Stuart, IAB's President and CEO, is quoted as saying.

Current US-based subscribers of the watch list include 24/7 Real Media, AOL, Atlas DMT, CNET Networks, Walt Disney Internet Group, DoubleClick, Falk eSolutions, MSN, Univision.com, Weather.com and Yahoo.

In January 2005, the IAB contracted with ImServices to keep an industry-wide list of ad-related spiders and robots for use in internal and external auditing of ad impression reporting. An IAB Policy Board consisting of members with experience in ad operations and online ad-related auditing had updated this list once a quarter with the help of ImServices. The new, merged list will be updated monthly through consultation with JICWEBS in the U.K. and the IAB Policy Board in the U.S.