The Wall St. Journal wrote a piece about advertisers not being pleased that ads bought through ad networks are showing up next to provocative content.
This is a difficult issue. I can understand the advertiser’s concern and brand perception, but as Charlie O’Donnell points out with his “slammin booty” response, the people buying their products are viewing that type of content, so it’s really just brand protection on their part.
But regardless of that, many people outside the industry wonder why this even happens. The article does an okay job explaining the problem, which is basically that there isn’t enough transparency and protections built in to network technology and the buys that are taking place. Advertisers buy from networks in order to get the volume they need, and ad networks either buy from other networks, or place the ads on their publisher sites. However, publishers can dupe the networks and put ads in places that the networks don’t even know about.
Luckily, technology can help solve this problem, and we’re working on it for our Yield Manager Marketplace. We have a product called Media Guard in the works which works to solve the classification, ratings, and control of the creatives, as well as classifying publisher sites correctly and stopping publishers from serving ads on unapproved domains.
Will it solve the problem entirely? Probably not, but it can make a dent and help improve our marketplace and the industry.