• by Tyler Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_tyler, November 4, 2014

Rocket Fuel has thrown down the gauntlet, challenging the digital ad industry to prove its mettle and take the “Quality Challenge.”

“The Quality Challenge is simple,” Rocket Fuel writes in a post announcing the challenge. “Marketers should require that any company that buys digital media on their behalf -- including ad networks, DSPs, and agency trading desks -- have the quality of those media impressions validated and publicly reported on by a qualified and authoritative third party from the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) Anti-Fraud Working Group.”

To help make the challenge a reality, Rocket Fuel this morning released Traffic Scanner, which it describes as “an impressions and traffic-quality monitoring tool.” It is free to use for anyone in the industry, not just Rocket Fuel clients.

Rocket Fuel boasts that its score was 96.55%, meaning the Traffic Scanner found that just 3.45% of the impressions Rocket Fuel serves are at high risk of being bot or non-human traffic.

“I cannot stress enough how important we feel it is for marketers and providers in the industry to adopt the standard practice of using a third party from the Anti-Fraud Working Group to evaluate and report on traffic quality,” stated Ari Levenfeld, senior director of privacy and inventory quality at Rocket Fuel.

He acknowledged that the Traffic Scanner tool is “not a substitute for a third party,” but added that it does give marketers a free “first look at the numbers,” which may encourage a deeper dive with a third party. (The third party Rocket Fuel works with is Forensiq.)

You’re on, marketers.