12 Mar 2010
Founder & CEO Alex Baydin speaks at IAB Ad Verification Day
IAB Hosts Interactive Advertising’s First-Ever Ad Verification Summit
Leading Agencies, Publishers and Networks Converge to Discuss Operational and Sales Implications of Latest Advertising Tools
Seeking to lend order and clarity to an increasingly important yet confusing component of the interactive advertising ecosystem, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today convened the interactive industry’s first interdisciplinary forum on ad verification companies and technologies. “Ad Verification Day: An Introduction and Discussion of Methodologies” is being held in New York City, with an invited roster of interactive industry executives representing marketers, agencies, publishers, ad networks, and technology companies.
Companies claiming the ability to verify online ad buys have arisen during the past several years in response to advertiser and agency concerns that ads are running within content environments that have not been expressly included in a media buy or could harm an advertiser’s brand equity. By verifying delivery of ad campaigns, advertisers and media buyers hope to identify and eliminate budget waste from their online campaigns and safeguard the reputation of their brands.
The IAB, which represents the interests of the sellers of interactive advertising industry, has been a driving force in creating transparency in and removing friction from all stages of the interactive advertising buying process. Ad verification tools, when employed with sound methodologies, hold promise as a new resource for further improving confidence in the process of buying interactive advertising. But members of the association have grown uneasy about the proliferation of ad verification companies with differing, unaudited technologies, and the cost that ad verification is adding to the implementation and reconciliation of advertising transactions.
“We need to make sure that the work of ad verification companies is about brand protection and not confused with currency,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB. “These companies are not audited against any industry guidelines for counting impressions. It is our hope that the IAB, working together with organizations like the Media Rating Council, will be able to create a process and a set of open standards for this new type of tool, with the twin goals of creating a brand-friendly environment for marketers while not adding complexity cost to the ad buying process. Ad Verification Day is our first step in understanding the needs of the market.”
“Ad verification processes should complement existing work agencies and publishers have undertaken to make the interactive advertising supply chain more efficient and effective,” said Dan Murphy, Senior Vice President Interactive Research & Ad Traffic for Univision Interactive Media, and co-chair of the IAB’s Ad Operations Council.
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