Pollution in the digital ad space
(Guest Blog): The agency perspective on programmatic issues
The New York Times just published a story about AT&T and Johnson & Johnson pulling media from YouTube, including:
“All digital non-search advertising inventory, after learning its ads were appearing on non-sanctioned websites, which presumably included ads on YouTube and websites in Google’s ad network.”
My initial thought was that this was great news — let’s monitor our ad spend more closely. But the more I thought about it, I wondered why these big brands were targeting (if not attacking) Google, one of the most influential/profitable ad tech companies in the world? Why would brands NOT want to be on a site that has over 90% unique visitors?
Maybe I’m watching Billions too much, but it sounds like someone was trying to short the Google stock!
YouTube? What about programmatic?
I get it. No one wants to see their ads next to offensive/discriminatory content. However, if big brands ultimately don’t want their ads to be surrounded by negative content, then they should take a deeper look at their programmatic buys. Only targeting YouTube doesn’t make sense. A simple search on Twitter, shows that AT&T’s/J&J’s programmatic buys are showing up on a site that has similar content to what they have deemed offensive material.
Is programmatic technology moving faster than buyers/advertisers can keep up? Understanding where your ad shows up is a challenge that shouldn’t exist. It’s ridiculous, but it’s where ad tech has gotten us. It’s leading us into many new challenges:
If a brand provides guidelines, or contextually/behaviorally targets specific categories and/or topics, how do ads get outside the barriers, let alone, how do these ads get served outside the US?
When a brand owns 100% SOV on a site, why are tags on banners below the firing? Should we have an above the fold viewability rate?
Ad tech solves new challenges with more tags
So we’ve nailed down some of the initial challenges that programmatic technology has created. Interesting enough, ad tech’s answer to the problems have been more tags. If you think about it, a single HTML5 banner/Video no includes the following:
- Adserver tag — (DCM/Sizmek) to track impressions and clicks (occasionally used for streaming)
- Adserver tag — (Innovid) to track video streams, quartile (% video completion)
3. Moat/Google Viewability tag
4. Brand Study/Lift OR Sales Lift tag
5. White Ops tag — To see where your ad is showing up
This is a conservative view of the additional tags on most ads. This can cause serious latency issues among other things. Just watch this page load all 827 requests (without it’s ads loading):
We must have more transparency. We can’t solve every problem with more tags. We have to build a better user experience. We must do this before it’s too late.
