The Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) and the Advertising Standards Bureau (ASB) will merge boards in a bid to achieve “better governance oversight”.

The move, which was agreed in a joint board meeting, will see the creation of a single board for the two bodies which will incorporate advertisers, members of the advertising industry and the wider community. The board will be elected in November.

Matt Tapper, chair of the AANA, said the aim of the merger is to help ensure more efficient operation of the ASB and help to future-proof the industry’s self-regulatory system.

“These changes will reduce complexity and cost and, most importantly, will have no impact whatsoever on the independence and transparency of Ad Standards complaints and adjudication processes, which will continue to be administered independently of the AANA secretariat, by its own chief executive and staff.”

Once installed the new board will hold formal consultations with advertisers, media and digital platforms and the Media Federation of Australia (MFA) in a bid to evolve the industry’s self-regulatory funding system.

“Advertisers supporting the self-regulatory system voluntarily pay a small levy on their media spend which is collected on their behalf by MFA media agencies. This levy funds the independent adjudication system. To date, this mechanism has served us very well.

“However, the increasing migration of advertising to the digital space has led to more advertising content and hence increased the workload and operating costs of Ad Standards. At the same time, there is a growing trend for advertisers to pay major publishers and digital platforms directly and that has the potential to significantly lessen the funding for self-regulation through the current collection mechanism.

“This is a global challenge, so the AANA will also actively engage with its counterparts overseas to help develop alternative funding models. This is a long-term project but given the future media landscape it is only sensible to commence formal discussions now,” Tapper said.