Irvine-based Specific Media LLC has joined Google Inc., Yahoo! Inc., Forbes Media and Microsoft Advertising on the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s list of 29 companies who are certified under its Quality Assurance Guidelines program.
The New York-based organization is comprised of more than 600 media and technology companies that combine to sell “86% of online advertising” in the nation.
Self-Regulation
It created the quality assurance program last year to “serve as a self-regulation framework to provide assurances to advertisers that their ads will not appear next to inappropriate content, including pirated intellectual property.”
There are more than a million sites that carry advertising and hundreds of ad technology vendors, according to the bureau. And without some framework for common ground, “buyers aren’t sure which sellers to trust and sellers have a difficult time trying to prove their integrity.”
The guidelines require sellers to disclose to the ad buyer their connection with the ad inventory; the content category where ads will be placed, such as automotive, news or sports; and content rating, such as “mature audience only.”
“Specific Media’s clients include some of the largest and most popular brands around the world and it’s critical that our solutions align with the highest standards to protect brand integrity,” said Bill Schild, the company’s senior vice president of global marketing. “By certifying our practices against the IAB’s guidelines, we’re helping to simplify the increasingly complex digital advertising space for our valued clients.”
Specific Media’s automated ad exchange is powered by Adtricity, a measurement tool that evaluates the quality of online ad placements and publishers and assigns them letter grades. Adtricity was developed by Specific Media’s subsidiary Vindico, and looks at criteria such as opportunity for the ad to be seen; page content; execution and delivery of the ads; and the quality of the site’s traffic.
“Prime Quality” ad placements are assigned an “A” and compared to “TV-like” advertising—high-impact, with exceptional execution. “Poor Quality” placements are on the other end of Adtricity’s spectrum and get an “F.”
Online advertisers can use these ratings as a guide during real-time bidding in the ad exchange.
