What is Ad Verification?

Ad verification is a misunderstood service. Have you ever noticed that on most advertising ecosystem landscapes, ad verification typically sits off to the demand side (i.e. the advertisers)?

In the age of malvertising and ad fraud, an increasing amount of publishers sites are infiltrated by malicious actors and advertisers’ money is wasted on ad impressions

Scanning ad tags has emerged as a remedy to the problem and consists of identifying bad ads and pinpointing their source.

Ad verification is not a singular, uniform service.

Just like there are demand side and supply side performance platforms, there are ad verification solutions that cater to either section of the advertising ecosystem grid.

The typical explanation for ad verification is that it ensures that every ad impression is a compliant, quality impression and is served and displayed as intended. This explanation falls in line with what a demand-side ad verification solution offers – which is among others, viewability, click fraud and attribution transparency. Yet, this explanation leaves out the other part of the picture, the ad verification solution oriented towards the supply side, the publisher.

Empowering Publishers 

For publishers, verification helps to minimize ‎the risk of running bad ads on their sites and enables publishers to have better control of the ads displayed on the site.

These supply-side verification solutions are built to safeguard the publisher-visitor (user) relationship and make sure that the user is protected from jarring, unnerving, and potentially harmful experiences. They provide security protection and automated ad quality enforcement for the publisher. Issues like, malware and poor ad quality “bad ads” – what contributes to the breakdown of the publisher-visitor (user) relationship – are prevented and guarded against.

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