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AdSafe: Lotsa Risky Inventory on Ad Exchanges

Written on
Aug 12, 2010 
Author
Gavin Dunaway  |
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AdSafe: Lotsa Risky Inventory on Ad Exchanges

armor.jpgADOTAS – Next time you log onto an ad exchange, you might want to put on protection — there’s all kinds of nasty stuff on those things, according to AdSafe Media’s second quarter review of the display ecosystem.

According to the latest report by the online media safety watchdog, about 17% of the inventory on ad exchanges rated as a high risk — that would be an AdSafe Rating of below 250. The rating is based on a series of algorithmic models, each weighted 50 data points and making up a 1,000 point scale. Comparatively, 6.3% of inventory served on ad networks scored below 250 as well as 3.8% directly from publishers.

Also, transparency is low, damn low on ad exchanges, especially when compared to ad networks and publisher direct. While publishers and networks respectively boast 97.4% and 82.6% IAB Category I inventory (i.e., full transparency regarding referring URL), ad exchanges can say the same for only 64.4% of their inventory.

The AdSafe Safety Index sat at 790 for the second quarter, up from 752 in the first quarter, meaning the ecosystem was a bit a safer for everyone. But still — watch out for dem exchanges!





Reader Comments.

Articles and studies like these serve to instill fear in advertisers without providing solutions. Exchanges provide a valuable service to advertisers by enabling them to find the right audience at scale for their campaigns. Exchanges also provide a valuable service to publishers in helping them monetize their inventory. For large publishers who have their own direct sales team, channel conflict is a real issue and exchanges need to give them the control to decide if their URLS can be disclosed or not. At the same time, the advertiser has every right to determine what works for their brand/campaign and exchanges need to give them the control to make that decision. If the advertiser requires URL level transparency, then their campaigns should only be run on impressions where that can be provided. If they want to run on larger sites where the URL cannot be disclosed, then exchanges should provide other means of giving the advertiser control of defining where their campaigns run (like the ability to define the context of the pages or block pages that have certain words/terms that are not appropriate for their brand). Safety is in the eye of the beholder and there’s no one size fits all solution here – what works for one advertiser might not work for another and same thing goes for the publishers. Ultimately it’s about providing the tools and the control to both the advertisers and publishers so that they can make the decision of what’s right for their business.

As an industry we will serve our customers better if we focus on solving for their needs rather than instilling fear. Ad verification is a valuable service if it’s done right. We should use groups like the IAB/AAAA to come up with consistent classification and approaches that benefit both the advertisers as well as the publishers.

Posted by Shanthini Sarkar | 9:39 am on August 13, 2010.

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