Ad verification has been an ongoing issue on Madison Avenue where agencies are responsible for ensuring their clients ads appear in the right content environments, and/or away from competing ad messages. But the online display marketplace - especially the self-serve, and largely automated marketplace surrounding advertising networks, exchanges and various publishers, has created new opportunities for brand ads to show in places that marketers and agencies didn't necessarily intend them. A plethora of online ad verification, brand safety, security and so-called malvertising software products have emerged, but most have been developed as tools for the demand-side of the marketplace, which AdSafe President-CEO Kent Wakeford says has created a new "friction" in the display advertising marketplace that has led to tensions and inefficiencies between publishers and advertisers.
AdSafe says the Network Monitor is designed to preempt those conflicts by informing publishers and ad network operators about high-risk ad placements before they impact a brand.
According to the third-quarter edition of a quarterly tracking report released last month by AdSafe, nearly 17% of ad served by online ad exchanges fall into a "high risk" category in terms of brand safety issues. The report found that more than 6% of ads served by online ad networks fell into that category, while nearly 4% of ads served directly by publishers met that criteria.