But once they leave the driveway, do you really know? You trust that they know what they’re doing and that they’ll stick to the plan, but face it — you won’t get a wink of sleep until the car is back safe in the driveway. You’ll get the full recap in the morning and decide whether they’ve earned your trust for next time or if they’re grounded for a month.

For brand advertisers, the anxieties are the same: Did my ad appear where or when it was supposed to? Did the right audience see it? Did it appear adjacent to questionable or benign content? Was all of the traffic and impressions legitimate? How much ad spend was lost to fraud? Can I trust my partners? With all that drama, it’s no wonder that brand advertisers have not jumped into display advertising with both feet.

You work with your agency to develop an ad strategy that will achieve your goals. You strategically map out your media buy, systematically researching and targeting the sites that will bring you the most optimal traffic and/or the most desirable audience.

You purchase intent and retargeting data to increase the likelihood of hitting the target. And then you entrust your plan to ad networks, exchanges and direct publishers, hoping that they will deliver the performance metrics and conversions as promised for the negotiated price.

Everything is figured out to a “T.” You pull the trigger and then… what, relax? I don’t think so. The car has left the driveway.

But there’s hope on the horizon. What brand advertisers need to know is that display advertising in 2010 can be tracked and monitored transparently — fear and guesswork no longer rule the day. The industry has heard your concerns, and responded in the past 12 months with a spate of solutions that prevent ads from entering the wrong neighborhood. If only parents had this level of control.

For instance, we now have the display ad equivalent of LoJack in the car so we can easily track exactly where and when your ad ran, whether it followed the prescribed media plan, whether it was hijacked by fraudsters — and if so, we can help you get your money back.

We have sensors in the car so we can see right down to the very impression how your ad performed, whether it met your demographic, geographic or other targeting requirements. They also track each trip to see which road gave you the most mileage and bang for the buck.

We have cameras (in the form of user engagement data) so you can see who got into the car, what they did in the car, whether they liked the vehicle, and what they would do to make the car perform better. We also throw in a transparent heads-up display so that all of your campaign variables are visible and at your finger tips.

But the one technology that I’m the most excited about is one that the industry didn’t have until this year — accident avoidance (aka, ad blocking). Previously, the industry had no effective way of knowing ahead of time whether an ad was going to be served next to questionable content.

There’s only so much an agency or media buyer can do to police the inventory on all the networks and exchanges. They rely on technology to help them make decisions, but unfortunately the data and “lessons learned” typically come after a campaign has run.

Ad blocking, on the other hand, is like collision radar and an intelligent auto-pilot rolled into one. The technology scans and analyzes page content in real-time, cross-references it against known malignant content, maps it against client-established content adjacency rules and prevents the ad from rendering if any red flags appear. This not only saves the advertiser money and improves campaign performance; it protects the brand from dings, blemishes and erosion.

The technology is evolving and improving to meet the constantly changing landscape. The more the technology is used, the smarter and faster it will become.

So the next time you’re considering advertising online, make sure to ask your agency or media buyer if their ad vehicle comes equipped with a full suite of verification, optimization and brand safety features. Otherwise your campaign could be in for a joy ride….

But hiding in the shadows of “the new black” are fraudsters who are just as excited about the prospect of RTB as advertisers and agencies. To them, it’s a gold mine. It’s opportunity. It’s money. It’s your money, in fact.

Why are they excited? In the industry’s haste to build the RTB bandwagon, jump on it and ride it to the bank, more thought is being put into how RTB can make display more precise, efficient and effective versus making it watertight and foolproof.

Looking back on the history and evolution of search, it seems we can pretty much figure out what’s in store for us as RTB rapidly transforms display: a Google hegemony, tons of fraud and a never-ending struggle against content adjacency issues. And while only Yahoo! can prevent the first issue, the latter two are being addressed by a growing number of solution providers.

New forms of fraud are already appearing that will diminish the effectiveness of RTB and drive up costs for advertisers. One such example, which we call “ad stuffing,” falsely generates impression volume by purposely implementing multiple ad tags within a standard iframe banner. The banner is actually large enough to contain many, many ad tags, but with scrolling explicitly disabled within the iframe, only the first ad is visible and therefore actionable.

In this case, RTB delivers the right ad to the right person at the right time and the advertiser pays for the impression, only the intended target never sees it. The offline equivalent would be a big highway billboard blocking smaller billboards, or ad pages purposely glued together in a magazine.

To combat this, media buyers can employ tools that can monitor the extremely high number of ad requests being spawned by the ad tag — a laborious and time-intensive manual task, to be sure. Or they can embed verification technologies directly into ads to automatically evaluate banner delivery at the time of rendering.

We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of the new vulnerabilities and loopholes stemming from RTB. With greater efficiency comes greater complexity, and the more moving parts there are, the easier it is for the system to break down or be exploited. But even if we conquer the fraud problem, there are still the inevitable content adjacency issues.

RTB’s ability to micro-target and retarget audiences is astounding. The new Kool-Aid getting guzzled in the industry is “buy audiences, not context.” I fundamentally agree with this approach, but what if that audience goes where a brand dares not?

Back in the old days of buying on content sites, agencies were exceedingly careful about protecting their clients’ brands, and checked out the content before they bought: CNET = yes; Angelfire = no. As networks and exchanges became more prominent, agencies handed off the task of policing publishers.

Let’s face it — there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to improve the transparency of networks and exchanges. But now, with real-time bidding crunching data to deliver targeted impressions across numerous inventory sources, there’s even less focus on or awareness of content than before.

And without that knowledge, it’s going to be more difficult to guarantee brand protection. Without that guarantee, it’s going to be more difficult to convince big brand advertisers to spend more online.

That said, we believe there are two ways for brands and agencies to scale their reach without sacrificing safety. First, they can build a walled garden of sites manually. This is safe, but inefficient.

The second and more scalable way to build reach and audience is to partner with those technology providers who are actively building large footprints of safe, transparent traffic; not on blind networks — where risk still looms in the form of URL spoofing, passed tags and fraud — but via transparent media practices with specific reporting and safety tools built to assist brands in increasing reach safely.

I think everyone would agree that RTB has the potential to elevate display to the level of search — or beyond — in terms of delivering targeted ads. Some might even argue that RTB is what’s going to save display from becoming irrelevant.

I personally want RTB to succeed for the plain and simple reason that as campaigns become more efficient and effective, with reduced fraud and waste, online ad spending will increase and everyone in the industry will prosper.

But before we all go too far down that road to prosperity, let’s make sure that we take the time now to correct some of the mistakes that were made with display in the past so that 10 years from now we don’t find ourselves mired by the same issues that plague display today.

Sure, there’s a recession on. But spend enough time listening to the talking heads and you’d think Americans had overnight (against years of proof to the contrary) become fiscally responsible to the point of canceling Christmas.

Not so. One thing you can count on is Santa. He may show up late, maybe a bit grumpy, but he still shows. So while consumer spending in general, and considered purchases (higher ticket items) specifically, will pale in comparison to recent years, brands are not going to respond by taking their (metaphorical) balls and going home.
“It’s the impulse purchase and the self-purchase that’s going to suffer this holiday,” said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD Group, in the New York Times yesterday. Notice he didn’t mention GIFTS.
The Times article continued: “Retailers, worried about grabbing the few dollars consumers are willing to part with, will be offering the kind of discounts usually only seen in the days leading up to Christmas. “I think electronics are going to go through an early promotional period,” Mr. Cohen said. “We’ll be lucky to get through October without aggressive promotions.”
PROMOTIONS? Sounds like advertising to me!

In fact, indications from comparison shopping engines (CSEs) and ad networks so far this quarter are that retail advertisers may spend relatively aggressively in Q4 during the down economical cycle, the better to capture a meaningful share of a shrinking revenue pie. Only one shopping engine (who will remain nameless) has lowered CPCs going into the quarter. And traditional holiday spenders do not appear to be pulling campaigns.

In fact, a new Epsilon CMO Survey shows digital ad spend is increasing at the expense of traditional. Sixty-three percent of the 175 marketing execs they surveyed see an increase in their spending on online media while 59 percent see a decrease in traditional marketing spend.

At WidgetBucks, where eCPMs across our network have doubled since August, we’re seeing a strong advertiser appetite for hard-to-reach Long Tail traffic. Further, the click-through rates on our shopping ad widgets have jumped 33 percent in October compared to last month, showing that consumers continue to be engaged when offered products they want.

As has been widely noted, most recently by Pubmatic, advertisers in general have been sitting on the sidelines for two quarters, and with a grim 2009 looming large, the impetus is there for marketers to spend budget now and get results to leverage against 2009 plans.

The fundamentals of the internet media market are still sound. Consumers are still migrating usage time from offline to online engagement, and spending online versus offline as well. Dynamic Logic says consumers are more accepting than ever of “over-content” ads (pop-ups, hovers and the like). Video advertising and content consumption online continues to skyrocket, while display remains prominent and search continues to grow (PWC Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2008-2012).
So while it may be easy to get sucked into the doom and gloom, don’t be surprised if we all experience a decent holiday season!

Just as healthy online ad economies hide weaknesses in the network ranks, the downturn will reward networks that stand up to scrutiny. Numbering into the 300s – even more, by some estimates – ad networks vie for a piece of a shrinking piece.

If you’re a media buyer how do you shore up your buy? With buys needing more justification and accountability than ever, what are the bellwethers for a healthy ad network for my needs? Author and consultant Robert Moskowitz recently provided a variety of tips on selecting the right ad network for your campaign.

As an ad network though, you need to take stock in what you ultimately control: your ad network. That may sound pedestrian but tough times should drive you to focus on a few core rules. Does your network add something truly unique to the equation? And what are you doing to ensure you are standing when the dust settles?

When it comes to key initiatives within the ad network industry, there are three key legs of the proverbial stool that will make or break your ad network in these uncertain times:

Proprietary Technology
What is your special Intellectual Property sauce? Ad networks that simply rely on brute force, media arbitrage, and outsourced manual optimization are on a road to nowhere.

A network’s role as value-added intermediary begs demonstration of said value by 1) creating relevant efficiencies, 2) providing something an advertiser wasn’t getting previously and 3) developing ways to get things done at less cost – and unless networks leverage unique technology solutions to these challenges, they’re undifferentiated and their success has an expiration date.

Scale and Unique Reach
With so many types of networks – behavioral, geographic, vertical, and so on – HOW we reach an audience is just as important as WHO we reach. While enormous scale is still a selling point for some ad networks, it is quickly becoming less of a differentiator. Instead, unique reach to specific verticals and target markets is becoming increasingly attractive to advertisers. Ad networks that are able to target specific valuable audiences, in a transparent way, clearly set themselves apart from the masses.

Sales Team
I’m just going to say it right now: Sales people (often) suck. Network reps are notorious for their lack of experience and penchant for being ill-prepared and unable to succinctly describe the exact value they bring to the table (See Points 1 & 2). Maybe a few bad apples have spoiled the bunch, but network sales folks and their leadership have scorched a large swath of online ad dollars via agencies and brands, and those buyers are still feeling the burn.

How do you avoid this? Start slow and low (CPM), communicate proactively, prove the value and over-deliver on the proposition. Build spend and relationships over time. You’ll be doing us all a favor.

This is a time to return to the basics. Sanjaya Patel of Google (ex-DoubleClick executive) mirrored my assessment during a recent OMMA Global panel. Patel added that while most ad nets are making money now and will continue to do so in the short term, long-term viability is still in question.

Make no mistake, there will be significant consolidation, shakeout and movement in this industry over the coming months. In the meantime, as a media buyer, know what to look for, and as an ad network, know what you look like. In either case, this will serve you well as the industry as a whole finds its feet.