Why Brands Need Ad Verification Tools By Seth Meisel

#SMX #32C2 @ThriftBooks @SethMeisel
Why Brands Need Ad Verification Tools
Protecting Your
Brand In The Era
Of Fake News

Started in 2003 and operated from a storage unit in Kirkland, WA
 2 founders would hand deliver books to the post office in the evenings
In 2007 we opened our second warehouse
 Rapid growth for the next 6 years
Today we are the largest used book seller in the world
 Over $95M in revenue
 Over 700 employees in 11 states
 Over 15M books shipped in the last 12 months
 Our total Dev and Marketing Team is still less than 20 people today
ThriftBooks.com – Milestones

Does is matter which websites a brand’s ads show on?

How I found out I had a problem:

Sleeping Giants Movement (@slpng_giants)
is a movement letting brands know they’re
showing ads on Breitbart.com.
They were tagged in this tweet because S.G.
asks members like @Feralish / (aka “Cat Loaf”)
to take screenshots of brands showing on
Breitbart.com.
Their aim is defund Breitbart of ad revenue.
Here’s the steps I took to respond:

I initially reached out to the account that sent the tweet…

THE S.G. FAQ:http://bit.ly/2hgC9wv
THE S.G. UPDATED CONFIRMED LIST:
http://bit.ly/2gcSNvW
REMOVE ADS YOURSELF: http://bit.ly/2hzUZin
Note: As of writing this, S.G. reports that over
1,300 brands confirmed that they have removed
Breitbart.com from their ad buys.
Then I read S.G.’s FAQs and did a “confirmation tweet”

Major brands not aware their ads are showing on Breitbart:
– http://n.pr/2gIu8A9
Macedonian town of Veles had a small industry of profiting from
websites with fake news headlines during the recent US presidential
election:
– http://bit.ly/2kphWY3
“Methbot” by October 2016 was siphoning $3 - $5 million per day in
ad revenue across +6,000 websites:
– http://mklnd.com/2gZc410
Recent news tells me I am not alone:

1. Am I able to fix this issue myself?
2. What is the extent of the issue?
3. How do I audit where our ads have shown and will be shown
going forward?
4. How much has this issue cost my brand so far?
5. How would we go about blocking non-brand safe ad placements
before they happen?
Outlining the requirements of a possible solution:

Whitelisting & Blacklisting Solutions
These solutions help brands create custom strategies specific to
their business vertical (exp. Books vertical), analyze which sites
you have served on & optimize for brand safety.
Pre-bid Placement Verification
These solutions monitor and/or blocks ads placements if the site
violates your brand’s brand safety settings.
My research turned up a few types of solutions:

 IAS (Integral Ad Sciences)
 Trust Metrics
 WhiteOps
 Pixalate
 Moat (Analytics)
 DoubleVerify
I ended up with a shortlist of potential vendors:

Needed a solution that would identify
which sites we’ve been wasting ad
spend on & stop traffic to those sites
going forward.
Step #1: How do we audit 145,000+ websites?
domain
ebay.com
mg.mail.yahoo.com
yahoo.com
tumblr.com
itunes.apple.com
outlook.com
play.google.com
drudgereport.com
msn.com
weather.com
mail.aol.com
us-mg6.mail.yahoo.com
answers.com
apps.facebook.com
us.msn.com
imgur.com
us-mg5.mail.yahoo.com
collective-exchange.com
offbeat.topix.com

• Gave them a 7-month Inventory report of 140K+ domains our ads showed on.
• Trust Metrics categorized 4,500+ domains that represented 93% of our ad
impressions.
Trust Metrics audit:

1. “White” Sites
2. “Gray” Sites
3. “Black” Sites – (low quality, not safe, High UGH, Non-English, Insufficient Data, Foreign,
redirected, opaque)
Inventory breakdown of the 4,519 sites in the audit:

Trust Metrics audit:
1600

Good news is that half our spend was ok! The bad news is that the other half
was “gray” or “black” and potentially wasted. Wait, what’s black mean??
1600

“Black” site definitions:

“Black” site sub-definitions:

Some examples of “low quality” sites:

Examples of “not safe” sites:

And examples of sites “not in database”:

Finally, examples of “gray” sites:

“White” sites:

We followed up with 19 sites that we blacklisted
(not safe, low quality, not in database)
Blacklisted Sites from audit represented:
o 771,422 ad impressions on brand unsafe domains.
o 1,116 ad clicks
o $1,372.94 in spend
Actions taken as a result of this audit: Sites
collegefreakz.com
thatviralfeed.net
loanpride.com
vorply.com
fastpokemap.se
blackfridaydeals2016.co
coolmath-games.com
brainjet.com
stars.topix.com
roasted.com
likes.com
minq.com
ratemyjob.com
zoo.com
urbandictionary.com
reddit.com
deviantart.com
mangahere.co
beforeitsnews.com

Need a pre-bid blocking solution that would stop the programmatic
ad buys before they’re bid on, before my company’s ad shows on
the site.
Step #2: Can we proactively prevent ads from showing
on a non-brand safe site?

• 19 day test on our Remarketing campaigns that
featured IAS “monitoring” tags
• Set Brand Safety Settings for categories like
Adult, Violent Content, etc.
• Monitoring Fraudulent Traffic
• Monitoring ad Inventory unrated by IAS
• Monitoring ads showing on browser 3rd party
tools
• Monitoring Ad serving in Geographic regions
• Monitoring View ability Percentage
IAS (Integral Ad Sciences) Test

Not blocked at the domain level,
but ads blocked on parts of
domain that weren’t brand safe

Geographic Ad Monitoring
• Useful if your sites only fulfills to particular countries.
3rd Party Viewability KPIs
“Suspicious Activity” Non-Human Traffic Monitoring
Other KPIs monitored by Pre-bid Verification Vendors:

Findings:
• 11% of our Ad Impressions monitored would
have been blocked by our custom brand safety
settings (or 321,153 ad impressions)
• 1.3% of our program were “suspicious” ad
impressions (or 35,531 suspicious ad
Impressions)
 less than 1% of ad impressions served in non-
U.S. countries

Google has started allowing MRC Audits:
• http://bit.ly/2lDHG2b
Facebook’s changes to their “trending” feature:
• http://on.wsj.com/2ksE6Yq
• http://on.mash.to/2mciGxf
• http://bit.ly/2m7UZGc
Google removes 200 websites from AdSense network:
• http://on.mash.to/2l9kvxG
Final thoughts – looking forward:

1. We blacklisted domains that are not safe, low quality and not in TM’s database.
2. Based on insights from our 19-day Integral Ad Sciences monitoring test, we are now
looking into implementing a blocking tag solution so we can utilize pre-bid ad blocking.
Actions taken based on findings:

1. These types of solutions can help optimize ad spend & protect your brand’s (or client’s) ads from showing
on non-brand safe sites. They can also filter out suspicious activity, monitor geographic ad serving &
establish viewability metrics.
2. Look into the feasibility of serving your own ads via a dedicated ad server or via vendors like (DoubleClick
Campaign Manager (DCM) or Sizmek for display ads & Innovid for video ads in order to be able to opt into
tag-based solutions.
3. Make sure vendor you choose is properly accredited by the MRC (Media Rating Council)
4. Blacklist at the domain level only when the whole site is problematic, otherwise you risk limiting a
program’s reach. My preference is pre-bid blocking at the sub-domain level.
Recommendations for Brand Managers:

Related Links:
Meet the Ad Companies Ditching Breitbart and Fake News:
http://bit.ly/2hRUY63
Advertising’s Moral Struggle: Is Online Reach Worth the Hurt?
http://nyti.ms/2mqxyev
For Advertisers, Fake Eyeballs May Be Bigger Problem Than Fake News:
http://n.pr/2gIu8A9
Google purges nearly 200 websites in fake news crackdown
http://on.mash.to/2l9kvxG
White Ops reports biggest ad fraud botnet found yet: ‘Methbot’ targeting high-CPM video inventory:
http://mklnd.com/2gZc410
Journalism Fights For Survival In The Post-Truth Era:
http://bit.ly/2kme4H7

LEARN MORE: UPCOMING @SMX EVENTS
THANK YOU!
SEE YOU AT THE NEXT #SMX

Why Brands Need Ad Verification Tools By Seth Meisel

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Why Brands Need Ad Verification Tools By Seth Meisel