DoubleVerify Report Shines Spotlight on Compliance in Online Advertising and Identifies Areas of Improvement

Trust Index shows that ongoing verification and remediation reduce noncompliance and increase brand safety

NEW YORK, Apr 3, 2012  DoubleVerify (“DV”), the pioneer and worldwide leader in online media verification and real-time decisioning, today published its 2H 2011 Trust Index. The report highlights the positive impact that verification has had on the ad-serving industry in increasing accountability, transparency and insertion order compliance. It shows how campaign compliance is further strengthened when combined with blocking and remediation.

As part of the Trust Index research, DoubleVerify analyzed campaigns across more than 30 platforms and 150 networks and identified the most compliant ad networks from July to December 2011 as (alphabetically): 24/7 Real Media, aCerno, AudienceScience, Epic Marketplace, Microsoft Media Network, RocketFuel, Specific Media, ValueClick, and Yahoo! Network Plus and interclick from Yahoo!. Advertising platforms that were most compliant include (alphabetically): Cadreon, a part of the Mediabrands Audience Platform, MediaMath, and Xaxis.

“DoubleVerify is making a significant impact on the online advertising industry,” said Oren Netzer, CEO of DoubleVerify. “Verification and remediation continue to play a vital role in increasing industry transparency as well as driving display advertising compliance and campaign ROI.”

The Trust Index’s analysis of the second half of 2011 highlights the enormous improvements to noncompliance that comprehensive verification, combined with active remediation and blocking, brings to a campaign. Once remediation and verification take full effect, incident rates drop dramatically. Campaigns starting after July 1, 2011, saw a 25 percent drop in noncompliance rates after verification services started. By adding weekly remediation, campaigns showed a 46 percent improvement in average rate of noncompliance over campaigns using only verification. Blocking is another valuable way for providers to reduce noncompliance — one campaign saw 7 times higher average rates of compliance for the partners on which blocking was used.

In both 2H 2011 and 2H 2010, trends pointed to greater noncompliance at the end of the year, with 2H 2011 traffic increasing by more than 57 percent. The weeks surrounding Black Friday and Cyber Monday saw jumps in traffic up to 23 percent above the 2H 2011 average and noncompliance rates 12 percent above average. This increase in noncompliance was considerably larger on unverified traffic.

Other highlights include:
  • 44 percent of ads on verified campaigns were served below the fold (compared to 47 percent in 1H 2011)
  • 13 percent of advertising pages included multiple ads for the same campaign (compared to 14 percent in 1H 2011)

DoubleVerify examined metrics from hundreds of advertisers, thousands of verified campaigns and more than 200 billion impressions to produce this bi-annual report.

About DoubleVerify

DoubleVerify is a leading software platform for digital media measurement, data, and analytics. DV’s mission is to be the definitive source of transparency and data-driven insights into the quality and effectiveness of digital advertising for the world’s largest brands, publishers and digital ad platforms. DV’s technology platform provides advertisers with consistent and unbiased data and analytics that can be used to optimize the quality and return on digital ad investments. Since 2008, DV has helped hundreds of Fortune 500 companies gain the most from their media spend by delivering best in class solutions across the digital advertising ecosystem, helping to build a better industry. Learn more at www.doubleverify.com