It’s 2 a.m., let’s not throw the babes out with the bath water
Marketing received strong feedback to a recent story investigating fraud in the RTB space. To drive further discussion on this important issue, we present a selection here and encourage MarketingMag.ca readers to contribute their views in the comment section.
From our Nov. 11 issue
Mark Sherman, CEO, Media Experts
The premise of the story “It’s 2 a.m. Do you know where your ads are?” (Nov. 11, 2013) is that the burgeoning programmatic display marketplace does not adequately ensure brand safety and that advertisers should beware of fraudulent online behaviour. These issues – brand safety and waste – are not new to our industry. Brand safety is a very interesting issue.
Jeff Fraser, the article’s author, postulates in his piece that “while surfing the web you click a bad link and end up at BeachCreeps.com.” Perhaps that’s how he got there, but I’d argue that the rest of the site’s audience found this site by using related search queries, folks who were on the hunt for this type of content, who want to engage with it and who (gasp) enjoy it, and return to it. I don’t judge those folks. I do know that they are consumers with money to spend. I do know they have been to my client’s site and shown interest in their products, and I do want to retarget and reengage them. I do know that it’s highly unlikely that anyone who would be offended by this content will ever see it, let alone see the ads.
I’ve encountered this same issue years ago. As a 24-year-old rock radio sales manager in Montreal I couldn’t get a buy out of McDonald’s for “brand safety” concerns. Seems that, to them, rock music was drug-related and, therefore, not a suitable environment for their ads. The listeners were pot smokers they thought. I argued in vain that the people who would hear the ads certainly thought it was a suitable environment and that those that found rock music to be evil reefer madness would never know the ads were there. I didn’t make the sale, in spite of the fact that all of the demographics (male 18-34) were in my favour, as was my pricing, and that the over-consumption of that target audience was driven by the munchies. (That part was my “insight”).
Many of the advertisers on beachcreeps.com evidently see this matter as I did then, as several of them, and other important brands, are still advertising heavily there, even after being called out by Jeff. One is a bank who doesn’t discriminate against customers who like to look at pics of girls on the beach, OMG.
Organized crime and scammers follow the money, and so it should come as no surprise that there are unscrupulous types out there seeking to capitalize on the programmatic and online space. It’s very evident from Jeff’s piece that our industry is working hard to stay ahead of this problem. In spite of that, the six properties that the piece identifies “as sites that show erratic, high-volume traffic patterns characteristic of what experts identify as “non-human” (a.k.a. bot) visitors” still enjoy activity from a broad section of Canada’s most important brands including The Globe and Mail and America’s car makers.
So either the media buyers who handle these accounts don’t read Marketing, or overall their buys perform. A bot can simulate a page load, even a click, but a bot can’t convert. Ultimately these imperfections, this waste gets optimized out of the mix, and our industry will get a step ahead of these thieves.
Waste is not a new media issue. Here it just has a different, criminal form. We’re accurately calling this fraud. What’s fraud? Twenty years from now we’ll look at CPM as a fraudulent metric. Heck, I won’t wait that long! We know well that 40%+ of impressions load below the fold…there, but never seen. Is that fraud? We know that up to 60% of the 1,000 in a TV CPM are unlikely to see the ad, and the beat goes on. This fraud, if you want to call it that, or this deception is evident everywhere in the media business. We don’t have a great history of making unexaggerated pragmatic counts of audience, but thank God that advertising works.
So let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. The foundation of all of our media metrics is very shaky. Waste is everywhere, some of what we call waste is not even there, it’s simply numbers and not actual impressions, not actual ad delivery, just an opportunity for it, a big maybe… a Cost Per Maybe.
Programmatic media is a revolution, and it’s not yet perfect, but it sure is better. The notion of being able to deliver the right ad to the right person is the holy grail of media. Inherently this means eliminating the wrong people, the waste, the wasted funds and only paying for ad exposures to consumers who are likely to buy. Programmatic media enables this sort of data-driven approach based on census-level browsing behaviour, hard first-party data. We know who our customers are and who looks like them. Programmatic ad tech allows us the ability to intercept those prospects one at a time, at a price that makes dollars and sense, or we don’t buy.
There is no doubt that the advent of programmatic media is as significant to the media buying business as the horseless carriage was to transportation. The horseless carriage also had detractors, and imperfections. In ad tech, as in motor racing, the most successful teams have a marriage of the best technology with the best talent. Sometimes the talent falls short, sometimes the technology.
The programmatic market place is expanding rapidly and destined to reshape our entire media industry after decades of stagnation. It deserves scrutiny, and the scrutiny of a responsible trade press. Let’s just be certain not to throw the baby out with the bath water.
P.S. Matt Sanchez, the CEO of Say Media proposes a simple solution for killing online fraud, read it at MyersBizNet.com.
James Aitken, CEO, The Exchange Lab
I welcomed the recent Marketing article that cast the spotlight the programmatic market and aired concerns around brand safe advertising online. Brand safety is so often cited as the biggest barrier to a larger proportion of brand budget moving online and as such it’s not just an issue confined to the programmatic space but it is a broader digital challenge. Many of the issues raised in the article are based on genuine concerns and as such they need to be addressed. What’s important is that as an industry we take both individual and collective responsibility for the solution.
The biggest challenge brands have within programmatic marketing is finding a trusted partner who will offer transparency and help them navigate and understand the space. In 2005 back in the heyday of ad networks, I was working in the UK when Brand Safety issues first arose. We were quick individually to recognize that there was a problem and then collectively as an industry respond, working collaboratively to find a solution. We formed IASH under the umbrella of the IAB. Its sole aim was to prevent ads being placed on inappropriate websites and set up an audit process to bring transparency and accountability to online advertising and address brand safety.
Whilst technology has evolved advertisers still want the same, to know that their online campaigns are running in brand safe environments. And where there’s demand there’s also supply. The market has provided commercial solutions to provide advertisers with accountability and transparency through software and technology tools that can be layered onto campaigns. These content verification tools provide solutions that have done for brand safety what email did to snail mail.
Audits are now in real time as opposed to retrospective and IASH has been replaced by a broader industry collaboration that brings together trade bodies and industry players alike. The ‘DTSG Principles’ aim to evolve the work of IASH by building a system for all business models and technologies in the UK display market. The Principles will inject greater transparency for brands into the market and are supported by key stakeholders in the industry – both buy and sell side. This has facilitated the creation of one universal standard and governance body for the whole digital market with every sector represented.
The City of London Police have also set up PIPCU, a division dedicated to tackling online fraud. Working with the IAB and its members PIPCU update and circulate an industry wide blacklist of websites that have content that is illegal, fraudulent or flaunts copyright infringement. Most of the major players have signed up to enforce this blacklist cutting off revenue streams and making these sites commercially unviable. Not only that but the police are prosecuting offenders through the courts. These are just some of the many initiatives we are seeing in in other in other markets that we work in.
More brand spend is migrating online, a trend that is set to continue. In the U.K. where measures have been taken to address Brand Safety luxury goods brands are amongst those leading the charge and embracing the programmatic space and they have some of the strictest brand criteria in market. This movement can be attributed to the work that the industry has done to educate brands about the measures that are in place to prevent fraud and protect brands. The migration of brand spend to online programmatic channels will only increase if advertisers feel confident that as an industry we have the ability to combat brand safety issues head on.
And the solution is not just about technology and automation, the human layer plays a pivotal role. Advertisers need to be educated and empowered so that they ask potential partners the right questions. Trade bodies should look at what they can do to unite the industry behind one universal standard. This will put Advertisers firmly back in control of their digital advertising, brand safety and, in turn, bring more revenue into online and programmatic channels.
In the meantime what should advertisers do to ensure that their campaigns are brand safe?
1. Undertake proper due diligence on the companies that you work with, speak to them to understand what measures and processes they have in place and don’t be afraid to ask questions. These are topics that they should be happy to talk to you about.
2. Check that they are signed up to all of the relevant trade bodies and their codes of conduct.
3. Ask what content verification tools they use.
4. Whilst brand safe tools are good, they have limitations to their technology so ask what internal measures they employ in terms of human checks and supervision
As a global company we adopt best practice in all our markets. Brand safety and alignment with appropriate content always has and always will be a top priority. The policing of inventory is something that the exchanges and SSP’s we work with take very seriously. But it doesn’t stop there, we continuously review existing and new technology solutions to provide our clients with peace of mind. As members of the IAB we adhere to all industry best practice and our integrated vendors must meet strict standards and go through a due diligence process before being approved.
In terms of where the responsibility sits, in my view it’s with everyone. We all have a responsibility to address these issues head on. The focus is now firmly on prevention as opposed to reaction, just as it should be. We need to continue to work on prevention, a reactionary response is too far down the line and too little too late. Canadian Advertisers want to buy media online, they need to be online, they just need to ensure that they pick the right company to partner with.”
