• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, June 24, 2011

Video advertising sold as pre-roll but running in a banner unit or somewhere other than before the start of a user-selected video has long been a problem in online video. So-called fake pre-roll also often auto-start or auto-play in violation of IAB guidelines for video advertising. To help combat that issue, video marketing company TubeMogul has added a feature to its demand-side platform (DSP) dubbed PlaySafe designed to block sites that run fake pre-roll. If detected, the system automatically shifts budgets to legitimate sites.

In a recent test of 7,000 sites, TubeMogul came across 400 sites running fake pre-roll, totaling more than 3 million potential impressions per day. These included pre-rolls auto-playing within small and below-the-fold video players as well as within banner ad spaces. Click-through rates were 0.05%, lower than actual pre-roll ads, with a majority of impressions below the fold. Read more here.