The main issue facing publishers today? Ad quality
Ad quality issues bounce users off sites, which affects viewability and a publisher’s bottom line.
The Solution?
One word – Ad quality protection.
Ad quality is really an umbrella term. Under that umbrella, the most important aspects of preventing your ship from sinking are; security, content quality, and brand safety.
Ad Security
Unfortunately, programmatic advertising leaves the door right open for not only bad ads but malicious ads as well.
And for malvertisers, evasion is the name of the game. In the programmatic market, malvertisers easily disguise themselves as legitimate buyers. For bad actors in the ad ecosystem, malicious ads are easy to deploy, and evading low-tech security is no challenge. And for publishers, to say the least, prevention is hard.
A single vulnerable ad slot presents an opportunity for an attack, launched directly to the user and their device. When users sessions and devices are compromised by malicious ads, they are driven away from your site, to ad blockers, or both. Ad blockers and loss of user loyalty both spell loss of revenue. In other words, the monetary effects are felt immediately and over time.
Stolen Traffic
Not to mention, malvertisers make money off of publishers work.
Malvertising is big business for criminals all over the world. It allows them to profit off a publishers reputation, inventory, and traffic.
If you’re thinking, I’m a small publisher, why would they care about me? Well, malvertisers target smaller publishers banking on the presumption that smaller publishers lack resources to mount a full defense. Meanwhile, premium publishers are targeted because of their highly engaged, highly valuable audiences. Moreover, these bad ads ultimately affect user experience, engagement, and retention.
Ad Content Quality
For the sake of clarity, when we say, “content quality,” we’re not pointing the finger at your editorial team.
We’re talking about where the user goes when they click on an ad.
What’s on the landing page? Does the ad’s creative accurately represent the content it leads to?
AND We’re certainly talking about making sure content is classified accurately and specifically, so fewer off-message ads end up next to that content.
In programmatic, it’s essential to classify landing pages in real-time, before the page even renders.
Brand Safety
Publishers should step back and ask:
Are our content categories too broad? Is that inadvertently causing ad quality issues?
When we categorize content, are we representing our brand and our vision accurately?
These are questions publishers can answer, and the answers will not only help publishers monetize but enrich the entire programmatic ecosystem. Prioritizing UX drives changes that equally benefit readers and publishers – from the editorial to the bottom line.
Superior Protection
Instead of finding a temporary solution to stop your boat from sinking, prevent the situation entirely. Prevent your users from experiencing malicious or low-quality ads on the per-impression level with a combination of real-time blocking and verification technology. Together, these offensive and defensive tools ensure that ad inventory is always secure and high quality.
The Bottom Line
The problem: You have a boat. But it’s taking on water slowly.
The short-term solution: You bail out the water with a large jug.
By doing so your boat might not sink – so fast. But it’s going down – trust that.
Boats don’t sink because of the water around them; boats sink because of the water that gets in them.
Don’t let what’s plaguing other publishers drown your site too. Stop worrying about taking on water and get back to your core business.
