Top 4 Tips For Combining Native and Programmatic

mediapost.com

Native advertising has rapidly emerged as an exciting way for advertisers to engage with consumers, and offers an interesting new revenue stream for publishers. Native emerged out of a desire for publishers and platforms to deliver advertisements that fit with the feel of their site, and are consistent with viewers expectations over how a platform should behave.

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1) Choose your feed carefully.  It’s important to ensure that any native programmatic ad fit well with the overall look and feel of the host page design.

There are many different types of feeds, each of which will give your ad different context. The Interactive Advertising Bureau defines content feeds as publisher sites and news aggregators such as CNN, Forbes and Yahoo. Product feeds are retail sites and app listings such as Amazon, Etsy and eBay, while social feeds are social networking and messaging apps such as Facebook, Instagram and Tango.

The feed that you choose will largely depend on the type of content you have. Story and video ads can be expected to perform better within content and social feeds, product ads would likely perform better surrounded by other product content, and native app install ads are a good fit for social. A native ad on a social feed could also be enriched with social data, such as friends that like a particular profile.

2) Choose your placement. Advertisers can choose to purchase ads that are “in-feed” as a single atomic unit (e.g., hosted on an article page or single image page), outside the core content (e.g., on a right rail), or as a recommendation widget.

Different types of ad placement will involve tradeoffs in terms of performance and inventory. For instance, right-rail ads are likely to have higher inventory but lower click-through rates, and in-feed ads will have the lowest available inventory but above-average click through.

The placement type will dictate the metadata you provide, too. Heavily visual ads are likely to underperform on the right rail for instance, as the thumbnail will be displayed as a smaller size than in an in-feed ad.

As with feeds, you should experiment with which placement types work well for you and continue to optimize as you receive results.

3) Adapt KPIs accordingly. Native programmatic will involve a sea change in traffic KPIs (key performance indicators) when contrasted to display. This change is twofold: There are areas where we can expect native ads to outperform display, and there are some new metrics that you will need to pay attention to if you want to make sure your native ads are performing well — measurements that matter less for display ads.

First, the areas where you should expect native to outperform traditional display are click-through and conversion rate. Native programmatic ads are closer to a publisher’s site in terms of look and feel than traditional display ads, so should drive higher levels of engagement.

Social shares provide great insight into the value of your native ad content. If a native ad was sufficiently good that a certain number of readers wanted to tell their followers about it, it’s easy to compare that with the average number of shares that a piece of social content on your site receives. You should expect programmatic native on the whole to outperform generic display and come closer to social metrics.

4) Understand your platform capabilities. The standards for native programmatic are still evolving. Some DSPs support all of the different feed types, while some choose to specialize in certain ad types or media formats, such as direct response or video storytelling. Some DSPs have been slow to integrate native formats altogether.

Bidding algorithms will also take time to learn and adapt to the new formats. It’s worth watching the results of your campaigns particularly closely with native programmatic, as some platforms do not distinguish according to media type. This can in turn lead to some campaigns not performing as you would expect. The capabilities of native programmatic tools are standardizing, but we’re not there yet.

Report: 12% of native ads are not labeled

marketingdive.com

Dive Brief:

• A study of ads by MediaRadar found that 54% of native ads are labeled as "sponsored," while 12% have no label at all. 
• The study found other terms are used to identify native ads: “promoted” (12%), “presented by” (6%), “provided by” (5%), and “brought to you by” (4%).
• Separate research conducted by Research Now for Contently found that 48% of U.S. internet users polled reported feeling "deceived" after realizing an article or video is sponsored content.

Dive Insight:

Native ads are an effective and growing format for marketers in a world rife with ad blocking. Native ads currently make up 56% of all display ad revenue, according to data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), PwC and IHS, but BI Intelligence predicts that native advertising will account for 74% of all ad revenue by 2021.

However, concerns over the blurred lines between sponsored content and editorial content are arising at media companies, in regulatory hearings, and on social media. 

Last December, Grady College published research that foundless than 8% of the study’s participants could tell the difference between paid and editorial content — a troubling finding in a media environment where consumers are growing frustrated by a poor user experience. 

The Federal Trade Commission made waves earlier this year by offering guidelines for native ad disclosures. The FTC guidelines specify that native advertising should be disclosed “in plain language that is as straightforward as possible.”

Recommended Reading

eMarketer: The Lines Between Native Advertising and Editorial Content Are Still Blurred
Marketing Dive: Are FTC native ad guidelines the first step toward regulation?

Telltale Signs You Have an Ad Fraud Problem

entrepreneur.com

By now you’re probably sick of hearing about ad fraud.

You know ad fraud costs the industry $18.5 billion annually. You’re well aware that for every $3 spent, $1 goes to fraudsters. You get that ad fraud is a costly problem, and no one is immune. It doesn’t matter if it’s pay-per-click (PPC), pay-per-call or display advertising, fraudsters continue to find ways to drain advertisers of hard-earned dollars. Even mobile, which accounts for 30 percent of all digital advertising revenue, is getting hit hard by ad fraud.

You may be thinking what’s the point of constantly rehashing it when there’s no solution in sight. Every time you get rid of one fraudster another one pops up. Might as well learn to live with it, right?

Wrong.

While you can’t simply press a button and make ad fraud go away, there are ways to stop the bleeding. By knowing what to look for and which tactics to employ, advertisers can mitigate ad fraud.

First, let's talk about click fraud.

Click fraud is the bane of many advertisers’ existence. You think your campaign is doing well, only to wonder why conversions are drastically down. Turns out your campaign is being hijacked by pesky bots.

There are three tell-tale signs that you’re a victim of click fraud. Here they are.

1. You get a spike in clicks.

This is when you’ll see an increase in click volume with minimal change in conversions or a spike in clicks from a keyword from one search engine but not others. Often there will be repetitive clicks from the same IP address too.

Your clicks may be coming from areas outside your target area. Don’t be fooled. Bots pretending to be consumers are the culprit.

2. You have a high rate of abandoned shopping carts.

If you’re encountering a high rate of shopping cart abandonment, you may have a click fraud problem.

Let’s say you sell golf clubs. Golf clubs are one of those products that sell themselves. If you need a golf club, you will purchase one. It’s not like you’re trying to sell something abstract. If you’re seeing a ton of traffic but no golf club purchases then you may just have a fraud issue.

Remember, while bots have the ability to download and fill-out forms, they aren’t sophisticated enough to complete the purchase yet.

3. You have a drained budget.

When you have a drained budget and nothing to show for it, that’s a huge red flag. Where did all of that money go? Unfortunately, it often goes to fraudsters.

Currently the music industry is feeling the heat from bots. Fraudsters are stealing huge chunks of money from music streaming services. It’s so easy. It’s like taking candy from a baby.

First, a fraudster sets up an artist account on a platform, such as Spotify. Then they upload fake tracks, and create a bot to stream those tracks on repeat. Now the fraudster is making a ton of money and cutting the artist and producer out of the profit.

Click fraud tip: To stay on top of click fraud, keep track of your metrics on a regular basis so you can spot any unusual activity.

Next, let's talk about impression-based ad fraud.

Twenty-two percent of impressions are considered suspect traffic. Imagine paying for an ad, and it’s never actually viewed. That’s the problem impression ad fraud poses for advertisers. Here are a few common types of impression-based fraud.

• Ad retargeting: Bots pretend to be engaged users and are served retargeted ads that they click so they aren’t viewed by an actual engaged user.
• Video fraud: Ads are stacked, layered or invisible, triggering impressions even though nobody is watching the video.
• Paid impression fraud: Paid traffic can often be riddled with bots.
• Hidden ad impressions: Small ads can be hidden within larger ads, causing both to trigger an impression.
• Fake sites: These sites are created for the sole purpose of serving ads, not content.

Impression ad fraud tip: If your reports aren’t lining up, there’s a problem.

Related: How Ad Fraud Ruins the Internet

Third, let's talk about ad injections.

Fraudsters not only utilize bots, they use browser extensions to place ads on websites through a nefarious tactic called ad injection. Once the ads are injected, they’re sold by third parties without the owner’s permission. And of course, any money that’s earned is collected by the fraudster, not the advertiser.

Pinpointing ad injections isn't easy, especially if you’re using programmatic advertising. Oftentimes, you don’t know there’s an issue until it’s too late. But if you know what to look for, you can quickly remedy the situation once they’re discovered. Here are three clues you’re dealing with an ad injection:

• It appears on top of an already existing ad.
• It replaces existing ads entirely.
• It’s running on pages that weren’t supposed to have ads at all.

Ad injection fraud tip: Keep an eye out for companies involved with ad injections, and try to steer clear of them.

Related: Giving Advertisers a Way to Bypass Facebook Click Fraud

Lastly, let's talk about pay-per-call fraud.

Some may think it’s harder to fraud pay-per-call than pay-per-click. But fraudsters have managed to find a way.

To detect fraud, make sure you have set criteria, including a minimum call duration and key presses. Know your audience too so you can detect anything out of the ordinary. For example, a Colorado phone number calling about hurricane insurance.

To separate legit callers from bots or fraudulent serial callers, consider using the following.

• Interactive voice response (IVR): With pay-per-call, it’s imperative to use IVR to filter calls. You can create a series of phone prompts that will qualify calls before they ever reach a live person. While bots can click, they won’t be able to pass the phone screening process and will be quickly filtered out.
• Call recordings: Also utilize call recordings to detect any red flags. By reviewing recordings you’ll be able to listen for any callers that may be just calling to for a specific time to receive payment for a call.

Pay-per-call fraud tip: Use IVR to qualify calls and be sure to review call recordings to detect any red flags.

Related: 5 Ways You Can Be Swindled by Click Fraud

Ad fraud is a nuisance that comes in many forms: pay-per-call fraud, impression-based fraud, ad injections and pay-per-call. No one is immune, and it’s a costly problem that continues to grow.

It’s up to advertisers to remain vigilant against fraudsters. The best way to do that is knowing the common signs of ad fraud so advertisers can effectively mitigate it.

Retargeting Revulsion? Join the Data-Driven Revolution...

exchangewire.com

Retargeting is often viewed as a dirty word in the digital advertising industry. From annoyance with receiving ads for already purchased products on the consumer side, to opinions that it devalues display advertising on the industry side, retargeting has popularity issues. As Martin Pavey (pictured below), UK country director, Flashtalking writes, there are more sophisticated ways to target consumers today. Here, Pavey tells ExchangeWire that retargeting needs to evolve, using data and creative intelligently to truly understand and engage with the consumer.

Retargeting is about acting on clear signals. If a consumer shows interest in a product, the goal of retargeting is to convert that interest into a sale, to turn window shoppers into buyers. It takes a consumer’s direct sign of intent and encourages them to take that next step. 

Today’s data-rich targeting methodologies offer more sophisticated ways to detect that sign of intent. In many ways, we are finding that the intent itself was more nuanced than retargeters once imagined. Most smart marketers today understand that behavioural signals are not to be taken entirely at face value. When a consumer shows interest in sports cars, it’s not necessarily a sign they have the intention, let alone the financial means, to buy one. Rather, that signal is one input in a sophisticated profile that may take into account age, household income, location, and so on. It probably makes more sense to show them ads for tyres, car repair shops, certain brands of sunglasses, or apparel. 

The problem is that most retargeting today will still turn right around and show that consumer pre-made ads for the same sports cars they were originally searching for. All the sophisticated tech we have to understand consumer’s intentions hasn’t yet translated into a new sophistication in how we act on those intentions, and in how we design and deliver the message. It’s finally time for retargeting to evolve in that direction – to look beyond a simple response to the last product viewed. 

Evolve beyond the last product

Let’s take another example. A consumer is browsing online for wall paint and carpeting. It looks, on the surface, that they are planning to do some work on their home. But what if the week prior, that same consumer was looking at family cars and cribs? These behaviours suggest the consumer is expecting a child, and, likely, in the market for larger purchases than paint. A remarketing ad featuring nothing but home improvement products misses that big picture and those bigger buys. Given the richness of today’s data sets, it’s outdated and simplistic.  

Combine additional data to enhance retargeting

Martin Pavey, UK Country Director, Flashtalking

The key to this evolution of retargeting is the layering-in of additional data and better quality creative, both of which are easy and actionable today. Ad servers can now tap multiple data sets simultaneously, combining first-party DMP data segments, in-page contextual data, geo information, weather, time, sequences, A/B testing, third-party data feeds, you name it. These can, and should, all be available in your ad server and, when used in combination with site-visit behaviour, will deliver on the big picture and identify the big opportunity. Executing on that opportunity requires that you go one step further and have the data inform the personalisation of the creative itself. 

And just adding more data isn’t enough – you have to demand more detail from your data as well. The only way to truly validate conversions from retargeting is with impression-level reporting. Anything short of a full fractional attribution model and the only thing your retargeting data will prove is the rate at which you harvest cookies.

Such a model will also yield the type of nuanced understanding that enables creatives to take an entirely new approach to crafting the message. Clarity on the consumer’s place in the purchase cycle allows for precise personalisation. In the previous example of the expecting parent, this creative personalisation is the difference between advertising, say, a life insurance policy instead of a can of baby-blue paint they already Googled. It opens the opportunity to stay one step ahead.

The real KPI: understanding the consumer

One of the reasons that last-product retargeting persists today is because our methods for measuring success are good at hiding these shortcomings. Catch-all cookie harvesting (AKA post-view conversion tracking) only serves to demonstrate that people who visit your website buy more stuff than people who don’t. People who window shop buy more than people who don’t shop at all – you don’t need data to figure that out.

But you risk letting the consumer’s real interests disappear behind a wall of safe KPIs. A bad retargeting job will show the consumer something they no longer want, already have, or never wanted in the first place. For long-term success, it’s time for retargeting to evolve beyond its comfort zone, take a bolder approach beyond last-product focus and focus on the relationship with consumers – by delivering engaging and high-quality creative experiences powered by intelligent data activation.

Five Minutes With: Mobile VR Ads will Move Industry Forward, says Arun Pattabhiraman

dmnews.com

Five Minutes With: Mobile VR Ads will Move Industry Forward, says Arun Pattabhiraman

What are your biggest opportunities & challenges in mobile advertising for next 12-24 months?

Big brands such as Samsung, Facebook and Google are vying to bring virtual reality (VR) to the masses with products such as Gear VR, Oculus and Cardboard. With this, VR as a technology finally seems to be coming of age. In 2016, an estimated 43 million people will own VR products worldwide, and this is only set to grow to 170 million by 2018. VR has already been transforming many industries. For instance, the airline industry leverages VR to deliver disruptive in-flight entertainment experiences, the automotive industry to give customers a virtual test-drive experience, and the travel industry to create virtual destination videos to convert prospective travelers. Needless to say,  brands are also beginning to see mobile VR as an opportunity to deliver an unparalleled, engaging and unobtrusive ad experience to end users. While it is still very early days, and the technology itself will likely take a couple of years to mature, mobile VR advertising presents just the right opportunity to move the industry forward and deliver ads that are truly memorable, immersive and impactful.

In an industry that is comfortable dabbling with cutting edge technologies such as VR, hygiene issues such as measurement and attribution continue to present challenges. In a survey in Q4 of 2015 by Digiday and Marchex, measurement and attribution in mobile marketing was cited as the biggest concern by marketers. With more digital budgets shifting to mobile, brands demand higher accountability from their marketing spends, and rightfully so. With consumers interacting with the brand across multiple touch points, the biggest challenge lies in tying online and mobile interactions to offline sales. In addition, the lack of a cookie-equivalent identifier on mobile has led to the use of other unique identifiers (both deterministic and probabilistic ones) which need to be combined and used intelligently so as to be able to track the user's mobile journey effectively - from viewing an ad, all the way to completing a transaction. Effective mobile attribution can only happen when one marries the right technology with the right data that is available across multiple channels.

What keeps your clients up at night?

Over the past year, our conversations with clients have been centered around acquiring and retaining high lifetime value (LTV) customers. While the definition of LTV varies across different types of apps and customers, advertisers across the world have moved away from measuring campaign effectiveness in simple terms such as clicks and conversions to post click engagement and LTV. For example, an advertiser promoting a taxi app cares more about acquiring users who take their first ride within seven days of installing the app. On the other hand, eCommerce customers measure the effectiveness of their campaigns based on the number of new users who make their first purchase or the number of repeat purchases made per user. With rising user acquisition costs and increasing attrition, our clients are more concerned about retaining, engaging, and maximizing value from existing users.

What's the hardest thing to educate clients about?

When it comes to measuring the impact of mobile advertising, most advertisers don't question the value of clicks. However, talk to them about the value of a view-through (especially one that does not generate a click), and the conversation is likely to get into a heated debate. Reports by comScore and our own InMobi network show that a large section of mobile users are non-clickers who are influenced by an ad, but do not take any immediate action. View-through attribution (VTA) - or the process of  measuring the influence of an impression in generating a conversion despite not generating a click - is a significant advancement on the mobile tracking and attribution front. Yet it is the hardest thing to educate clients about.

While resistance to VTA from mobile marketers are largely based on concerns around getting billed for users acquired organically, the benefits of leveraging the technology far outweigh the concerns. For one, view-throughs represent events that influence important upstream funnel metrics - that critical step in nudging customers from being “aware” to being “interested” in your product. Besides, optimizing a mobile ad campaign purely based on clicks might also lead to a sub-optimal campaign performance since users clicking an ad represent a miniscule percentage of users who are actually interested in the product being advertised, and often may not be a representative sample of the real-users that the campaign targeted in the first place. Some of our forward looking clients have seen significant conversion uplifts (as high as 100 percent) along with an improvement in the overall quality of users acquired. However, there is still a need to raise awareness around view-through attribution, and for it to see mass adoption in the mobile marketing space.

What are some unmet needs in marketing technology landscape?

The collision between the ad tech and marketing tech industries has been inevitable for quite sometime. However, the magic is yet to happen. From a client's standpoint, the need is to be able to map out a clear view of the consumer journey across all touch points and nudge them at the most appropriate moment to drive discovery, engagement and transactions. While enterprises are looking for a robust CRM tool to manage their customer lifecycle, ad tech and SaaS-based CRM platforms are yet to find a way to work with each other and stitch the story together in a seamless manner. Mobile advertising platforms need to evolve quickly to solve this crucial but missing piece in the puzzle in order to stay relevant and competitive in this much-fragmented industry.

What big developments in mobile marketing do you see on the horizon?

Advertisers today have three important demands when it comes to buying ads on mobile: transparency, efficiency and precision targeting. It's no wonder then that we are seeing a rapid shift of ad dollars to programmatic buying channels. With more than half of mobile display advertising touted to come from programmatic buying by 2018, marketers across the globe are rapidly adopting this new technology. While North America and Europe have been been early adopters of programmatic advertising,  developing markets such as India and Southeast Asia are not far behind.

Another big development in mobile marketing is video. Apart from being more engaging, video ads have seen higher click-through, conversion rates and user quality compared to other static ad formats. Mobile video as an ad format is also seeing innovations such as vertical-video and 360 degree video ads. Vertical video (shot in 9:16 aspect ratio) is one of the mobile-first video formats that has picked up significantly over the last quarter. Similarly, 360 degree videos are one of the more immersive video ad formats that couple video and rich media units to deliver a highly engaging experience for the user. Considering all these developments, video will perhaps be the most-used format by mobile marketers this year.

Switching to digital advertising is no guarantee of savings

theaustralian.com.au

Over the past five years, billions of dollars in advertising spend have been moved from news media to digital.

If you push advertisers or their media agencies for the rationale for this switch it does not take long to get to the immovable economic argument of CPM — the cost to reach one thousand consumers.

While news media has maintained its CPM at relatively standard rates over the last few years, digital media offers sensationally better value in comparison. It’s not uncommon for a national newspaper, like The Australian for example, to charge about $10,000 for a half-page ad in their newspaper. Assuming a circulation of 100,000 that translates into a CPM of about $100. In contrast, a digital billboard ad placed at the top of a social media site or popular digital page might offer a CPM of $10 or less.

Rarely can any business sustain itself with a tenfold price premium over its competition. But let’s pause for a moment and move our attention from the C to the M in CPM. Measuring media audiences has never been an exact science, but the recent advances in digital media have lowered that already wobbly bar several notches further down.

Not even the most naive client believes that the audience of 1000 Australians that have bought for $10 or $100 really numbers 1000, but how many will actually see their ad long enough to process it?

Let’s start with the digital billboard ad with its $10 CPM. We have to take out the proportion of the 1000 who are actually bots and not human. Ad fraud is a huge and growing issue in digital advertising and the latest data from the ANA in the US estimates that bots account for 11 per cent of the digital display advertising audience, and that the figure increases by 40 per cent for more valuable ads like our $10 digital ad. So we are down to 850 viewers.

The 850 viewers might be human, but many of them have invested in ad blocking software to ensure their browsing experience is digital free. PageFair estimated that in 2015 18 per cent of Australians were using ad blocking software. They also estimate that ad blocker usage is growing annually by 41 per cent so by now we can assume that a quarter of our 850 did not see the ad thanks to their software, leaving us with 638 viewers.

But just because you can view a digital ad does not mean you will view it. Digital ads have an annoying habit of appearing above, below or to the side of the viewing area that the consumer is exposed to.

Metrics are the German analytics company famous for their viewability assessments of digital media. Alas they do not currently offer any Australian data so let’s use their 2016 British data instead. According to that assessment, 47 per cent of served digital ads are actually viewable. So of our 638 viewers just less than half, about 300, can actually view our billboard ad.

But being viewable and being viewed are two entirely different things. How many of our 300 consumers who could look at our digital ad actually saw it?

Here we must turn to Lumen, the hot new eye-tracing company from London, who have enormous data sets examining what audiences actually look at when they consume media. Their new data shows that digital billboard ads, assuming they are viewable, will be seen by 64 per cent of the audience. So our 300 now becomes 200.

But moving your eyes across a digital ad is not the same as processing an ad. How many of those glances lingered long enough to take in some or all of the information in our digital ad? Let’s set the threshold at two seconds or longer. Lumen also has this data and can conclusively show that if 100 people see a digital ad, 4 per cent of them will look at it for more than two seconds. So our 200 glancers become 8 actual viewers. We paid $10 and got eight people to process our digital ad.

Let’s compare that breakdown with news media. Our $100 investment bought us 1000 readers but how many of them actually saw the print ad? Helpfully Lumen also measures print advertising and the proportion is 75 per cent. So we are down to 750 people already.

But hang on, we bought our 1000 readers based on circulation not readership. Usually more than just the purchaser reads the paper they bought. There are various estimates of readers per copy or RPC that vary from 3X to 6X circulation. Let’s apply a conservative estimate of 2X circulation. That means our 750 ad viewers actually rises to 1500.

Again, however, we have to apply the same two second threshold to this group too. How many of the print ad viewers dwelled beyond two seconds? One might expect this to be a lot better than the fast-moving, click-through world of digital. According to Roy Morgan, the average Australian spends 18 minutes a day reading their newspaper and the ads are part of that experience. That higher involvement is demonstrated in Lumen’s 2016 eye-tracing data which shows that 23 per cent of print ads exceeded the two-second marker point, meaning that 345 people saw our half-page ad.

That’s not a fair comparison with our digital ad of course. We paid 10 times the amount for our half-page print ad and could have therefore bought another nine digital digital ads on top of our existing one.

But even then, based on these figures, a $1000 investment in digital digital ads would have delivered a total of 80 people seeing my ad for two seconds or more. The same investment in print would have delivered nearly four times as many people.

Clearly I should apply healthy caveats to this data. Generalising so broadly, even with reliable third party data, is always an imperfect art. Digital offers many additional advantages in terms of better targeting and much more scalable options.

Similarly, we could point to the signalling power of being seen in a major national newspaper as an additional qualitative advantage of news media. There’s a lot more to this debate than crude audience estimations of audience.

That said, let’s take a healthier and more sceptical look at the M the next time the CPM data is trotted out. One thousand viewers is never one thousand eyeballs, but what it actually is must surely be one of the biggest questions in all of media.

The advertising rates quoted in this column are based on publicly available information.

Poor User Experience Holding Back The Video Advertising Industry

adexchanger.com

Today’s column is written by Ariel Napchi, founder and CEO at HIRO Media.

Programmatic advertising was supposed to create an environment in which a viewer is only exposed to relevant ads, a premise TV never succeeded in fulfilling.

The reality, however, is very different, illustrated by increased viewer discontent that has manifested in the ever-growing percentage of ad-blocker installations.

So what went wrong? It seems the answer lies with the viewers: They have been forgotten somewhere along the way. While brands are focusing on viewability, view-through rate and other KPIs, they ignore the user experience of the video viewer.

A slow video upload due to buffering raises the heart rate by more than 30%, which is similar to how one reacts when watching a horror movie, according to Ericsson. That, as you can imagine, is far from desirable. Users would rather leave the site than stare at a buffering signal.

The stress caused by this experience reflects badly on the user’s perception of the ad and the publisher site on which is was shown. Ad-serving latency is a huge factor that should be taken into consideration while working within the programmatic universe.

Consumers agree. Most desktop users and more than 40% of mobile users grade the viewing experience as acceptable to poor, highlighting site crashes and slow video loading as top reasons for poor user experience.

So, here lies the challenge. While fighting fraud, it is relatively easy to decide what is and isn’t fraud: Nonhuman traffic equals fraud. But dealing with user experience is more complex because it is harder to define objective criterions to measure user pain and translate them to concrete technical terms while enforcing them on the demand chain.

But if I had to guess which issues are the leading contributors to poor user experience, I would choose site crashing, malvertising and unexpected behavior as the top offenders.

Site Crashing

Accessing multiple buyers is the cornerstone of an auction. Normally RTB is done on the server side via efficient server-to-server communication, but the video heritage of the VAST/VPAID protocols and buyers’ desire to verify client-side properties before buying high-CPM inventory drives many video auctions to contain a major client-side part.

The problem is that most web pages cannot withstand multiple simultaneous ad calls, even though most ad tags initiate multiple simultaneous calls. One solution would be to minimize client components and preferably use a direct video ad or server-side bidding, where response times are minimal. The IAB's LEAN initiative (light, encrypted, AdChoices-supported, noninvasive ads) is an important step in the right direction in addressing these concerns.

Malvertising

Malvertising presents a new challenge to the online advertising world because it uses a loophole in the creative. The malware injected through the ad could hijack a computer, send the user to phishing sites or download injected software.

Things will probably improve when the industry finally shifts away from a Flash environment to more secure technologies. Tools offered by companies such as The Media Trust or GeoEdge can detect malware attacks, although these solutions are emulator-based and somewhat lacking real-time coverage.

Unexpected Behavior

Unexpected behaviors could include videos playing sound that the user did not initiate, black loading screens and video buffering. Most unexpected behavior is a legacy of the multiple chain calls within VPAID protocol. Waiting for the call process to end may cause latency, which is the main reason for black loading screens.

The causes are similar to those that cause pages to crash so the same solution could apply to both. It is also recommended to have an internal auditing team that will monitor the behavior of ads and block the problematic ones.

The issue here is that most of the ads paid for by advertisers do not measure up to good user experience. These ads might gain viewability and even good VTR scores, but they may sometimes slow the page loading or even crash the user’s browser, which causes a negative effect on the brand, the site and, ultimately, the industry.

These data points should be a wake-up call for our industry. Just as a couple of years ago it launched a battle against fraud and recognized its significance in the marketplace, now it’s time to fight for better user experience.