Provision 4.2 of ISO 9001:2015 cites “Needs and Expectations of Interested Parties.” Interested parties include not only obvious stakeholders (customers, suppliers, employees, and owners), but also anybody who is affected, or perceives himself as being affected, by the product or service.

Not all interested parties are, however, relevant. In “Getting Ready for ISO 9001:2005,” Paula Oddy notes that, “Typical examples of relevant interested parties could be direct customers, end users, suppliers, distributors, retailers, and partners.”

The concept of interested parties is extremely relevant to web page advertising. If you are the owner of the website, the advertiser (or advertising agency) that is paying for the ad is your obvious customer. The web page’s reader may be a potential customer for whatever is being advertised, but she is not the customer of the advertiser. She is, however, an interested party with the power to ban the advertiser’s content from her computer. This, in turn, reduces the advertiser’s revenue and also that of the web page owner.

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