There has been a significant reduction in non-compliance among ad networks and platforms, according to DoubleVerify’s 1H 2011 Trust Index.
Instances of, for example, ads served off white lists, on black lists, alongside inappropriate content, alongside competitors' ads, below the fold, to geographically irrelevant audiences, or simply just multiple ads from the same advertisers, reached 0.6% in the first half of 2011 among the best-performing networks, compared to 2% for the same period a year ago.
For the bottom tier of providers that rate was 26%, compared to 35% in 2010.
Growing Industry Developments
Much of this reduction can, no doubt, be attributed to the new services and tools coming onto the market - as well as funding in some cases. DoubleVerify is a case in point. In August it received $33 million in a financing led by JMI Equity and Institutional Venture Partners. That investment brings the company's cumulative financing to $47 million.
It also recently launched Navigator, an monitoring and reporting tool to help ad networks and platforms expand publisher on-boarding while monitoring their network. Navigator is powered by DoubleVerify's crawlers, or Virtual Visitors, which gather information from more than seven million domains and catalog billions of web pages.
Another relatively new product has been introduced by AdSafe Media - the AdSafe Engagement Quality Ratings. These new ratings work within AdSafe's existing protection and verification products but are also designed to enhance the RTB process, pre-bid.
They inform advertisers and DSPs in real-time of the probability of their ad being in view to a user, as well as the level of user engagement and the amount of time in view.
Also in August, Comscore acquired ad verification firm AdXpose. The AdXpose system will be part of Comscore's Campaign Essentials product, bolstering campaign measurement capabilities.
ABC Launches Its Initiative In October
An even bigger push in ad verification can be expected from ABC, which is expected to expand audit accreditation to media agencies and trading desks for the first time in October, New Media Age reports. A major reason behind this move is the rise of real-time bidding and dynamic buying - trends that have prompted most of the media agencies to offer their own demand side platforms, it said.
