Tag Archives: online advertising
So, if I am to believe everything I read on the internet – the only separating myself from a bot is the ability to recognize and mimic a simple string of nonsensical characters or phrases in the form a captcha. We’ve all used them at one time or another, the “prove you’re human test” when posting links on facebook, signing up for web services, leaving blog comments etc. They are nonsensical at best and blatantly unreadable and irritating at worst. But they are a decent line of defense against those who would attempt to spam your facebook profiles, saturate your blog with spam, and generally wreak e-havoc on the world. But a new breed of captchas is at hand, a new captcha that will be relatively easy to read, probably make sense and–most pertinent in our business, act as a bridge between utility and advertising–all while strengthening brand awareness.
“How can this be?” you might ask. Well, allow me to enlighten you.
Why did you take notes in school? There’s a good chance that somewhere along the way a teacher or a parent told you that writing things down helps you to remember them–especially the important things. Well, New York-based Solve Media and their clients are betting that their messages are important enough for you to remember. The plan is to combine captchas with ad revenue. Now, instead of typing out a string of nonsense you’ll write down a branded catch phrase from your favorite brands.
In the example below, random characters are replaced with the Microsoft altruism “Browse Safer.” Another example, an ad for the movie “The Town” might use something like “Turns out Ben Affleck can act, go figure.” McDonald’s, “Better than eating Cardboard.” And so on.
Internet Explorer branded Captcha
By Anna Mer | Critical Mass Chicago
How many of your banners are running on x-rated sites?
How many are running below the fold?
Or running in countries outside the US?
Now the moment of truth: Does the network you’re partnering with even know the answer to these questions?
As networks and exchanges continue to expand, it becomes more difficult for them to provide the 100% transparency they promise. Recently we’ve seen companies, such as Double Verify, step into the vendor space and try to police it. Double Verify uses their detection technology to find: hidden iframes within network properties that lead to x-rated sites, banners running below the fold beyond what you were promised, or impressions that have been incorrectly geo-targeted. But can these ad verification companies really stop the corruption happening behind the scenes? The answer… Not really. As Brian Morrissey points out, “Misplaced ads aren’t a problem unique to the Internet, but the digital medium, with its millions of sites, magnifies the risk.”
These protection tools do a great job of crawling the web and finding fraud. Once fraud is discovered, the agency verifying tool and the network vendor discuss where the error occurred and what to provide in added-value to cover the mistake. But that’s really only solving the problem one brand at a time. Will this monitoring insert enough fear into the hearts of networks to begin their own process of weeding out bad site partners and poorly monitored targeting techniques? I think that’s something we’ll have to wait and see. As Morrissey reported from a source at Media Math, “The future is in the prevention technologies.”
In the meantime, tools like Double Verify can help regain impressions lost to banner fraud while keeping networks in check. But that is still one site negotiation at a time and it happens after the fact. For brand-driven clients, they need to demand more of networks and hold them accountable. To implement these crawlers (without a fee to the advertiser), verifying partners need to be alerted and fees need to be negotiated into each partnership insertion order to ensure that campaigns are tracked correctly. Or as a co-worker of mine put it, “It seems like agencies have to do double the work just to get an honest view of a campaign. Shouldn’t the networks do this for us?”
I suspect in time the advertising networks will start to feel the pressure of someone watching their every move and begin to implement more defenses on their own exchanges to prevent this type of fraud… or they might just sit at their desks with their doors closed and hope this whole verifying thing just blows over.
What should smart marketers do in the meantime? While the fraud tools aren’t perfect, they’re still a step in the right direction. Ensure that Double Verify (or a similar vendor like Cyveillance, Adsafe, or Collective Networks) is part of every network buy. If not for any of the reasons listed above, it will help show which networks are committing a higher level of fraud and help guide you to choosing correct network partnerships for future campaigns.
Anna Mer is a Media Manager out of the Chicago office.
