Digital ad spend in Poland experienced 20% growth in 2015, IAB Poland & PwC Adspend Study reveals

Highest growth was in display ad spend and video grew by 34%

Find out more here and download the infographic below

Ad fraud creates uncertainty, leading to a breakdown in trust that threatens to damage the entire industry. Here’s what’s being done to put a stop to it.

 The digital advertising ecosystem is built on trust, working at its best when all participants are good, and when no one tries to deceive anyone else. That’s why ad fraud is potentially damaging – it can erode trust. Advertisers need assurance that their ads will be visible in the right places, and publishers want to be sure they aren’t losing revenue when fraudulent ads are sold in their name. But eradicating ad fraud is a collective effort and success will hinge on collaboration by all players in the industry. We’ve worked closely with TAG, the IAB, and other key players in the industry to tackle many of the issues around ad fraud, and we are committed to continuing and building on these efforts as the industry moves forward.

At Google, we have a global team with more than 100 people dedicated to fighting ad fraud through a combination of engineering, operations, and policy. Our mission is to make the Google ecosystem safer for those who use it – including advertisers, agencies, and publishers who choose to use our platforms to support their digital marketing efforts – creating greater integrity and more transparency.

We’ve worked hard to protect our ad systems, and we will continue to do so. This article highlights some of the key areas we’ve focussed on in the past year, with the aim of showing some of the ways that Google is fighting ad fraud. We’re also sharing these insights to spur other players in the industry to take action against these threats.

1. We cut out injected ads. Unwanted ad injectors are rogue applications/software that insert new ads, or replace existing ones, into the pages that users visit while browsing the web (often showing ads that are not interesting or relevant to users). This harms advertisers, publishers, and users, while providing a bad user experience (we received over 300,000 user complaints about them in Chrome in 2015). We added to a growing number of ad traffic filters by extending protection for DoubleClick Bid Manager against injected ads using an automated data filter based on several blacklists produced by our operations team. Approximately 1.5% of the inventory across multiple exchanges is excluded as a result.
2. We shared data to help filter bot traffic. Created by automated bots and spiders, bot traffic is artificially generated traffic that originates in data centres (facilities that contain large computing and storage systems). We partnered with the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) to produce a pilot program to share blacklists of data center IP addresses and domains associated with non-human ad requests or “bots,” (generated via automated data centre traffic). Back in May 2015 when the program launched, we found the blacklist filtered 8.9% of all clicks on DoubleClick Campaign Manager alone. Without filtering this invalid traffic from campaign metrics, advertiser click-through rates would have been inflated (vastly for some). This in turn would have had an impact on true campaign performance, and ultimately, return on investment for the advertiser.
3. We expanded our defenses against botnets. These are the huge families of infected computers that work together across the web in a coordinated dance aimed at generating massive amounts of invalid traffic by mimicking human behavior. Our team of engineers (or warrior scientists, as we sometimes like to call them) have been fighting ad fraud botnets and the malware that allows them to thrive for years. As with other defenses, we expanded protection of our ad systems by launching an innovative type of filter. This filter works by excluding traffic from three of the top ad fraud botnets (each comprised of more than 500,000 infected machines) and is also resistant to ongoing changes, aimed at making it hard to detect the malware that drives these botnets.
4. We boosted protection against falsely represented inventory. Ads showing up on illegitimate sites may be harmful for brands and are usually the result of falsely represented inventory (which occurs when the seller intentionally makes it look like their traffic is coming from another website). In some instances we’ve seen this type of activity account for up to 40% of inventory for a particular exchange purchased by DoubleClick Bid Manager. In addition to our ongoing operations work to exclude illegitimate and shady web sites, we launched a filter that extends this protection in an automated way, making it even harder for this type of abuse to occur, protecting brands’ and publishers’ best interests. Advertisers know their ads are being seen in the right places, whilst legitimate publishers aren't being cheated out of revenue from ads sold in their name.
5. We worked with others in the industry to forge a common language for our ecosystem. The industry needs to strive for precision when discussing these issues. With this in mind, it’s important to agree on a common language, which is why we’ve worked closely with the IAB TechLab and the Transparency Accountability Group (TAG) to create a taxonomy that organises fraudulent traffic into five groups. Having clear labels about ad fraud means we can reduce confusion and communicate consistently.
6. We’ve collaborated with the industry on transparency. As an industry, we have a responsibility to promote transparency in the work that we do. At Google, we’ve been public about many of our projects in the fight against ad fraud, including putting into place policies to tackle hidden ads, injected inventory, and falsely represented inventory; processes to exclude automated data centre traffic; and robust defenses against botnets. We are also collaborating with key industry players on the new Payment ID system that makes it hard for fraudsters trying to cheat the system. We’re fully committed to improving ad traffic quality for players across the digital ecosystem, making the web a safer place for everyone.

 In light of the positive changes to come, we’ve asked two of our collaborators to share their outlook on combatting ad fraud in the coming year. Here are perspectives from publishers FT.com and consultants MediaMath.

• FT.com: A high-profile agency for a bank approached the FT about buying some home page roadblocks. During discussions they mentioned that previous roadblocks for the client had under-performed. Our records showed no recent spend from this particular client. It turned out they had purchased two home page roadblocks programmatically and not one single impression had appeared on FT.com as they were purchasing fraudulent inventory on open exchanges rather than via FT managed private marketplaces. The detrimental impacts included the agency needing to repay the money, no revenue to FT for two roadblocks the client had tried to run, and no uplift to the advertiser. This highlights the importance of direct conversations between buy side and sell side in programmatic. There needs to be a focus on where the money is flowing to in programmatic. For example, there’s no excuse for money flowing to a non-FT bank account for an impression that has the ft.com domain. A secure database of publishers with correct identifiers for payments will help. The measurement platforms need to provide enough details to publishers to allow them to act on fraud, which may include the ability to communicate with users who have malware on their devices. Tech vendors measuring non-human traffic need to be audited, and there should be a way for publishers to flag concerns to them with regards to the accuracy of their measurements.  – Anthony Hitchings, Digital Advertising Operations Director, FT.com

• MediaMath: Fraud is the one thing that can completely destroy our industry, because it breaks the trust of the market. Ad fraud makes buyers unwilling to commit dollars to programmatic because they don’t believe they’re getting what they’re paying for. And if there is fraud, how can they believe the results they’re being shown? Fraud also makes sellers unwilling to commit inventory that the industry needs in order to grow. If fraudulent ads have a negative impact on site traffic, user experience, and monetisation, then publishers will allocate to other channels that don’t risk their core business. It’s extremely important for the industry that marketers have the utmost confidence in the programmatic revolution of ad buying, and are not having to trade innovation and effectiveness for quality.Blocking fraudulent actors really starts with the sales process – including rigorous screening of prospective clients’ reputations, histories, and business practices – as well as ongoing monitoring of client activity and a strict policy to penalise malicious behaviour, up to and including permanent deactivation. There needs to be an industry database of known bad actors, with individuals bearing as much scrutiny as IP addresses. Having a better chain of custody is also necessary – knowing where things came from and where they are going. From a global industry point of view, we need stricter regulations, bigger penalties, and global initiatives.  –      Dan Larden, MediaMath, Senior Manager, Media Partnerships EMEA

2016 will be marked by increased collaboration, awareness, and trust in the industry. Despite efforts by fraudsters to cheat the system, we and others in the industry are making strides towards making the digital ecosystem a safe place for brands, publishers, and users. 

Be sure to check out the Google report ‘How we fought bad ads in 2015’ for additional information on how we also kept bad ads out of our systems.

Online marketing is in a state of flux. From fraud to ad-blocking, brand marketers are really up against it. Great brands are built and optimised over decades, but with the recent explosion of digital tools marketers have the ability to tinker in real-time.

The shift has provided a myriad of benefits but also several hurdles, how marketers are dealing with these was the subject of some recent research.

Our friends at ‘The Programmatic Pioneers Summit’ surveyed 100 senior marketers about their feelings on programmatic advertising, including the investment they plan to allocate to it over the next few years, how confident they are in implementing it and what barriers they face in their organisation.

Some topics raised in the report include:

• What are your online & offline budgets and how do these compare?
• How comfortable are you and your organisation in executing programmatic campaigns?
• What are your biggest challenges as a programmatic marketer?
• How confident do you feel at measuring the success of your campaigns

For the latest industry figures and survey results, get your free copy of the full report here: https://bit.ly/21gXV0Y

Breadth of Adform platforms will allow local media agencies, trading desks, brands and publishers to enjoy seamless cross-screen advertising experiences

LONDON and NEW YORK, 28 April 2016 – Adform, the independent and open full stack ad-tech platform, today announced the opening of new offices in Singapore and Istanbul to service media agencies, trading desks, brands and publishers throughout the Asia Pacific (APAC) and Middle East regions.

The expansion into APAC builds on Adform’s considerable success in Europe and North America, and is in direct response to demand from global clients seeking to support multi-national digital advertising campaigns.

Expanding into Turkey is a direct result of increasing local demand for digital advertising. Over the course of 2015, spending for programmatic alone increased by 82% in the country and is poised to continue as the market matures. Furthermore, the Middle East region as a whole presents significant opportunities – particularly in mobile – for brands seeking to engage region’s social media and tech savvy population.

Cem Eroglu will head Adform’s commercial operation in Turkey. Eroglu has worked in the industry since 2007 when he helped Yahoo!’s Right Media Exchange bring RTB technology to Turkey. More recently, he served as head of sales for ReklamStore, a performance-based advertising network in Turkey.

“The digital advertising ecosystem in Turkey and the Middle East is highly fragmented, which poses significant challenges to local media agencies, brands and publishers. We’re looking forward to offering them streamlined workflows and end-to-end platforms so that agencies, advertisers and publishers can enjoy a seamless digital advertising experience,” said Martin Stockfleth Larsen, Chief Marketing Officer at Adform.

“Bringing Adform in-market benefits the entire region. Local consumers are sophisticated users of digital and social media, and Adform will help publishers and brands keep up with their sophistication,” said Cem Eroglu.

Rohit Kumar, a seasoned specialist in digital advertising and programmatic marketing, will lead the new Adform APAC team. He will work closely with Adform leadership to localize the platforms for key markets in the region, as well as helping to build out a local leadership team in Singapore and beyond.

Mr. Kumar brings considerable expertise to Adform, having previously worked at Google and serving as a founding member of Google’s Ad Exchange team. For the past three years he has been stationed in Singapore, serving as managing director for Sociomantic Labs.

“Adform’s approach to digital ad-tech is particularly important to the APAC market. We offer a seamless digital advertising experience unique in the marketplace, one that eliminates the need for numerous point solutions, manual interventions, and reconciliation of the discrepancies that occur when working across multiple platforms, regardless of whether you’re on the sell side or buy side,” explained Martin Stockfleth Larsen, Chief Marketing Officer of Adform.

"Adform has evolved rapidly over the years, and the breadth and depth of Adform's technology stack is staggering,” said Mr. Kumar. “Now in its 15th year of operation, I consider Adform to be ad tech's best kept secret and I'm excited to be bringing this technology into Asia.”

---

About Adform

Adform is the independent and open full stack ad-tech platform that encompasses creativity, data and trading, servicing media agencies, trading desks, brands and publishers globally.

All of our solutions are modular, and easily inter-operate with all major technologies used throughout the digital advertising ecosystem.

Adform was founded in Denmark in 2002 and is among the world’s largest private and independent advertising technology companies. We have over 700 employees globally, with offices in 18 countries throughout Europe, North America and APAC.

Visit https://www.adform.com or https://join.adform.com for more information

DIGIDAY spoke to IAB Europe’s Matthias Matthiesen about the legality of ad block detection for their article “Is blocking ad blockers really illegal in Europe?” from 29 April 2016.

Publishers are faced with an uphill battle as they fight to get a fair deal in programmatic trading; while all the while, the bottom line is that they just want to be able to provide their audience with the best digital advertising experience possible.

What does the emergence of new bidding technology mean for publishers and what are the real-life challenges? How can new innovative tech, such as header bidding deliver real potential for publishers looking to drive increased yield and optimise their revenue?

Download PulsePoint’s new eBook below to learn more! 

In this case study, ŠKODA builds a more relevant and engaging online customer experience with targeted creative, achieving a 53% increase in conversion rate and 9x better cost-per-lead. Read the full case study here or watch the video below!

Discover it here.

Brussels, 27 April 2016 - IAB Europe is delighted to announce the shortlist of finalists for its 2016 Research Awards. Winners of the eight categories will be announced at IAB Europe’s Interact conference in Lisbon on 12^th May.

Nick Hiddleston, Research Director Worldwide, ZenithOptimedia and Chairman of the Jury said, “The IAB Europe Research Awards continue to promote and share best practice across Europe and beyond, which is vital for the growth of the digital advertising industry.”

The Jury consists of three European corporate representatives and two IAB representatives, making it representative of the European market place. Nick Hiddleston, Research Director Worldwide at ZenithOptimedia and Chairman of the Jury, is joined by Paul Hardcastle, Research Director, EMEA at Yahoo!, Ariane Längsfeld, Client Manager – Media & Digital at Millward Brown, Pawel Kolenda, Research Director at IAB Poland and Tuncay Yavuz, IAB Turkey Board Member, Head of Technical Committee on Measurement and Digital Director at OMD Turkey. More information about the jury members can be found online here.

The Jury has drawn up the following shortlist and the winning entries to be announced on 12^th May.

The 2016 shortlisted entries are (in no particular order):

The IAB Europe Research Awards are an opportunity to gain industry recognition for your research projects and the contribution they have made to the development of the digital advertising industry.

Alison Fennah, Executive Business Advisor, IAB Europe said: “This is the sixth edition of the IAB Europe Research Awards, which continue to showcase research and data innovation in digital advertising research in Europe. With a revised set of categories we have seen entries from a wider range of companies and European markets than previous years.”

---------- 

About IAB Europe

IAB Europe is the voice of digital business and the leading European-level industry association for the interactive advertising ecosystem. Its mission is to promote the development of this young and innovative sector by shaping the regulatory environment, investing in research and education, and developing and facilitating the uptake of business standards. Together with its members – companies and national trade associations – IAB Europe represents over 5,500 organisations
www.iabeurope.eu   @IABEurope    IAB Europe

About the IAB Europe Research Awards

The IAB Europe Research Awards are an opportunity to gain industry recognition for your research projects and the contribution they have made to the development of the digital advertising industry.Knowledge is a key part of our programme to help develop the digital advertising business across Europe and we have a wealth of work that we aim to promote and share.Winning projects will become part of the IAB Europe expanding libraries of proof points, including the Programmatic, Multi-Device and Connected World and Ad Effectiveness libraries, for industry professionals to use in their strategies and daily work.

The 8 categories for 2016 are:

• Brand Advertising Effectiveness;
• Consumer Attitudes and Behaviour
• Consumer Devices
• Digital Advertising Formats
• Advertising Solutions
• Research and Data Innovation
• Audience Measurement
• Best Use of Research Budget

As part of a Boston Consulting Group study, Toyota worked with ZenithOptimedia, Performics and Vivaki, to test how using advanced targeting techniques enabled by a unified stack compare with using standard targeting techniques. Results were phenomenal.

Read the full case study here and watch the video below.

Discover it here.

What is ad blocking? 

An ad blocker is a software installed with the goal of removing advertisements from web pages. With the ad blocker, the internet user continues to enjoy online content, but is no longer exposed to any type of advertising. In most cases, all advertisements are blocked: from banners to pre-rolls, to pop-ups.

There are specific blockers for each device:

• Desktop: in most cases work as extensions for the browser or as a plug-in, but there are also browser that block the default advertising;
• Smartphone / Tablet: they are native applications that filter the commercials, or alternative browsers that allow the user to navigate without incurring advertising content.

The layout of a web page is changed once the ad is removed: the spaces left empty by advertising placements are removed, and the content will be repaginated. This way, the user does not see the white spaces in place of advertising and, in particular on devices with small screens (i.e mobile) the effect obtained is to show more content in the same amount of space. 

For more information about ad blocking, please download below the Ad Blocking White Paper (in English) from IAB Italy.

This blog article was originally published on the TYPES Blog. TYPES is a EU-funded programme under Horizon 2020 whose aim is to support growth in the online advertising industry through trust-enhancing tools and technologies, in the face of the growing popularity of advertising mitigation software such as ad blockers. IAB Europe plays a critical role in this programme, by providing insights and inputs from the digital advertising industry perspective.

Now that the public consultation has been launched for the review of the ePrivacy Directive, it’s interesting to consider the reasons a review is considered necessary. The review was mentioned explicitly in the Commission’s Communication on the Digital Single Market back in May 2015, under the pillar of creating the right conditions for a digital single market. In the Communication, the Commission announced that the review of the Directive would begin after the conclusion of the data protection reform package. The review is now officially underway with both the consultation having started and a first stakeholder workshop having taken place the same week as the data protection reform was adopted.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) sets out to ensure a high level of protection for personal data mainly from private actors in the information society sphere; the ePrivacy Directive, on the other hand, primarily regulates telecommunications service providers. However, one notable provision has a broader application: the so-called ‘cookie provision’ contained in Article 5 (3). The cookie provision requires users to consent to the storing of or access to information on their devices. While this applies to any technology which stores or accesses data stored on an end-user device, this usually applies to cookies, hence the name. The Directive itself is sometimes even referred to as the ‘Cookie Directive’. In 2009, the provision went from an opt-out requirement to an opt-in consent model. The result is that Internet users across Europe are confronted daily with notices informing them that cookies are being used.

A stark contrast exists in how Member States have implemented the cookie provision into national law. In practice, the most common method used is what is called a ‘cookie banner’ – a banner which shows up at the top or bottom of the page upon first visit, which informs users that cookies are being used for various purposes, like personalised advertising, with a link to a detailed cookie policy. If the user browses further, they thereby indicate their consent. This method can be observed across the EU’s Member States as it is a relatively low effort way for users to consent. They are confronted with a banner, but using the website as they normally would allows them to indicate consent in a natural way, without overly interrupting the browsing experience and taking any overly-distracting or time-consuming action. Privacy-concerned users can still find detailed information and they are informed how to refuse the storage of cookies.

In the Netherlands, such an approach would not suffice, as the consent required under the cookie provision’s implementation requires that users are given an explicit choice to accept or refuse. Further browsing only allows users to accept cookies implicitly, so it does not satisfy the requirement of an explicit action. As a result, users in the Netherlands are confronted with much larger banners with big ‘Accept’ or ‘OK’ buttons. Some websites go as far as to redirect users to a separate landing page to get their consent, then redirecting them to the homepage of the website they intended to visit only once they have given their consent. This is likely an effort to make it extra clear to the Dutch enforcement authorities, who have energetically enforced the country’s strict interpretation, that cookies have not been placed before consent.

In Germany, as far as the user is concerned the complete opposite happens. Cookie banners are extremely rare because German law provides an alternative solution. The German legislator created a special opt-out regime that allows the use of cookies without consent, provided that collected data is immediately pseudonymised, which means that data is scrambled in such a way that users can no longer be identified. Users can go to a website’s privacy policy page to learn more about what is happening and how they can opt-out of the use of cookies. While pseudonymisation is mentioned by the Dutch data protection authority as a method that improves user privacy, it does not affect the requirement of obtaining consent.

There are, of course, arguments in favour and against these approaches.

The Dutch approach might be seen as ensuring that users always know that they are giving consent and what they are consenting to. However, in reality users are confronted with pop-up screens and splash screens multiple times each browsing session, making it completely impractical to read and fully understand these notices. The result is that users tend to block or accept all cookies. There is even a browser extension which has the sole purpose of removing notices about cookies, named “I don’t care about cookies”. Between the two largest web browsers it has a userbase of 85,000.

The German approach might be criticised for not giving users an up-front choice every time they visit a website that uses cookies. but on the other hand it is a good compromise that does not frustrate users with annoying notices, as long as an additional layer of privacy protection is provided. Users can still exercise control after the fact.

The cookie provision is an example of a Directive not achieving proper harmonisation, as the technical and practical solutions were left almost entirely up to national legislators, who in turn left it to data protection authorities. Even the Article 29 Working Party refrains from recommending specific methods of gaining consent for the use of cookies in its Working Paper on the topic, instead outlining requirements to be met. While this allows Member States and publishers alike to come up with creative ways to getting consent, it also creates confusion as to what exactly is required in each Member State and leaves data controllers in a situation of legal uncertainty. In England and Ireland a banner merely has to link to more information and mention that cookies are being used, in France and Belgium the exact purposes of cookies have to be specified, and in Poland the banner merely exists to inform users, but consent is presumed from browsers being set to accept cookies.

The point is that as a company, there is no way to be sure of your cookie-consent policy being acceptable in each Member State without doing research into national implementations.  The review needs to critically assess how to ensure a more uniform or practical application of the Directive’s rule. It could even be argued that, as a matter of data protection, it makes more sense to remove rules for specific technologies and allow data processing by cookies to be governed by the GDPR. This would essentially ‘purify’ the ePrivacy Directive and focus its scope solely on telecommunications regulation.

Videology partnered with Gain Theory, a marketing foresight consultancy that brings together data, analytics, technology solutions and consumer insight capabilities to provide unique econometric insights into the effectiveness of video. Specifically Videology wanted to know the ROI of video, how inventory quality impacts ROI and what should the optimal AV mix be.

 The results quantified some well-known truths, such as the majority of sales take place offline. No surprises there, but the impact on ROI by inventory quality was far more marked than expected. Broadcast video really matters. Video as a medium certainly works - with every case study showing a positive ROI. The great news for brands is that video can not only complement TV with cost effective reach and deliver brand uplift, but critically directly impact sales.

Get the slides here.