• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, December 23, 2009

In an effort to bolster confidence among protective brand marketers, digital media-verification company DoubleVerify has launched a new product to prevent and block ads from appearing next to inappropriate content.

The new BrandShield product, which has already been tested by select agency and ad network partners, draws on DoubleVerify's existing platform and technology which currently verifies over 20 billion monthly impressions on behalf of marketers in a range of verticals, including telecom, pharma, retail, finance, CPG, and entertainment.

The effort is a direct result of client demand, according to Oren Netzer, co-founder and CEO of DoubleVerify.

"DoubleVerify clients have been asking for a real-time, scalable and reliable solution to protect against their ads appearing online near inappropriate content, before it occurs," said Netzer. "Real-time inappropriate content prevention changes the playing field and significantly reduces advertiser exposure to this threat to their brand equity."

Launched in May 2008, DoubleVerify launched its real-time verification solution for online ad transactions this past May. Tracking the delivery of clients' ad campaigns theoretically allows marketers and their agencies to identify and remove budget waste from their campaigns, safeguard the reputation of their brands online, uphold regulatory compliance requirements, and verify that they fully capitalized on their marketing opportunities.

According to DoubleVerify data compiled, using embedded pixels in client advertising and a patent-pending crawler system, 70% of impressions that are delivered on the Internet are implemented in a type of HTML code called nested IFRAMES. When nested IFRAMES exist, other solutions have difficulty identifying which site and page the ad is actually delivered on, which means they need to "block" the ad in 70% of the cases and are effectively creating a 70% discrepancy between sell-side and buy-side impression counts.

DoubleVerify had ported its capability to "see through" nested IFRAMES from its existing reporting and remediation service as well, giving it the ability to accurately qualify and see-through nearly 100% of the impressions and minimize any possible discrepancy issues.

This summer, DoubleVerify closed a $3.5 million Series A financing found led by Blumberg Capital, with participation from First Round Capital, Genacast Ventures and private investors.

Earlier this month, video ad network Tremor Media tapped DoubleVerify for increased accountability and transparency of video ad campaigns. Tremor serves in-stream and in-banner video ads across a network of over 1,500 mid-tier and premium sites including WWE.com and WSJ.com. The company has increasingly sought TV ad dollars, which it believes will increasingly migrate online.

BrandShield's ad blocking capability is expected to be available through a managed rollout, starting January 15 to existing DoubleVerify clients.