Mpire Blocks Ads From Appearing On Sites

Advertisers working to determine in real time if an ad should appear on a site now have an option. Mpire plans to release Wednesday an ad-blocking feature that works with AdXpose, a suite of solutions and services aimed at improving the performance of online campaigns for companies running ads across the Internet through ad exchanges, ad networks, and demand-side platform providers.

The AdXpose feature enables brand advertisers and agencies to set rules and guidelines that prevent ads from appearing next to questionable content or on sites that could tarnish the brand.

Clients can set any number of parameters, including content filters, so ads don't appear where and when they shouldn't. The feature also filters content based on geography, audience segment, and content classification, such as pornography, explains Kirby Winfield, Mpire's chief revenue officer.

The tool verifies campaigns per impression to keep track of where and when the ads appear online, whether they were visible, below the fold, daisy-chained across multiple ad exchanges or hidden among nested I-Frames. It goes beyond traditional placement verification by tracking performance against domain, geographic, demographic, classification and other campaign specifications.

Heat-mapping technology tracks the engagement with ads. Advertisers know exactly how, and for what length of time, people interact with ads. Advertisers and agencies can then adjust the ad copy or creative to improve performance to attain higher click-through rates and conversions.

Analyzing and comparing impression level verification, click-through and user engagement data, the platform detects traditional click and impression fraud, as well as new fraud tactics such as URL Padding, Ad Stuffing, and Domain Spoofing, according to Winfield.

This helps media buyers optimize their campaigns and also pursue restitution for infringed performance agreements. At the same time, ad blocking protects a brand from content adjacency issues before ads are served. And an Alerts feature now supports real-time campaign optimization during the campaign, versus reporting on the results post-campaign.

The tool also relies on comScore data, providing insight into the campaign's demographic and audience performance. Through an API call to comScore's database, Mpire pulls the data into its system, which helps determine the pages to serve ads on or block.

Mpire isn't the only one that offers this technology. Its features compete somewhat with offerings from AdSafe Media and DoubleVerify.

Daryl McNutt, comScore's vice president of marketing solutions, says there are a handful of companies "working toward" offering a similar service, but budget constraints have forced some to rethink product road maps. "Pulling the infrastructure together to support the service, and putting the tool in the hands of media planners at agencies have become the biggest obstacles," he says.

On the back end to support the database that drives it, companies need permission to access and look up the data, McNutt says. Simplicity also becomes a prerequisite. Making it simple to set alerts, especially for media planners just starting out in the biz, has become critical.

The tool has a simple button that lets media planners block the ad once it's identified. Simplicity is where the Mpire tool excels because media planners need a smart and simple tool, McNutt says.

The next step -- to link in full offline sales and monitoring brand lifts, as well as data from Compete and Nielsen -- will give better control to the agencies, rather than rely on the networks to block a specific site, McNutt says. The biggest challenge remains in building fast systems and strong infrastructure, which requires a huge investment, he says. "If you don't have a good data system behind it, you will have interruptions in ads being served," he says. "It won't allow you to manage ads on the fly, which is where everyone wants to be."

Aside from the ad blocking technology, Mpire formed a partnership with AudienceScience that will enable its clients to use the tool. "Platforms can use the data to analyze their own traffic downstream to help optimize distribution," Winfield says. "They also can enable clients who request a verification solution to wrap their campaigns with our technology and provide reports direct to the client."

2 comments about "Mpire Blocks Ads From Appearing On Sites".
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  1. John Grono from GAP Research, February 3, 2010 at 4:01 p.m.

    While this appears to be good an interesting software, I have to make comment on the following - "Advertisers know exactly how, and for what length of time, people interact with ads."

    Sadly, they still don't.

    Have a look at your own browser right now. How many tabs are open? How many have ads on them (some of them with auto-refresh on either the content or the ad)?
    How long have those "other tabs" been open? Yep - all that time is going into the calculation of "what length of time people interact with ads".

    Here's some rough mathematics. I guess my browser is open probably 10 hours a day (even though I am not always at my desk for those 10 hours. I estimate I'd have an average of six tabs open at any one time, each carrying at least one ad - many with more. Therefore put me down for something like 60 hours a day of 'ad engagement'. Utter balderdash!

    Systems that rely on deep analysis of server-based metrics have no real insight into how ads are actually SEEN. That can ONLY be collected client-side using samples or panels which can then be overlaid on the server-side data.

  2. Kirby Winfield from Dwellable, February 3, 2010 at 11:57 p.m.

    Thanks John - I wanted to respond to your assertion that advertisers cannot know how and for what length of time people interact with ads.

    I think you're confusing your metrics. Whether or not you leave a browser open has nothing to do with our tracking user interaction or engagement. We define engagement as mouse interaction within the ad unit. So, if someone enters the ad and performs interaction within it, we measure and report that. When they leave the ad, either by clicking off to the target site, or by simply mousing back to the content page, we measure and report that too. And, on the off chance they leave their mouse hovering over the ad unit for 10 hours, we remove outliers in the reporting to ensure no false positives skew the data. Hope that helps answer your concerns.

    --Kirby

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