Our CEO and Co-Founder Jacek Chrusciany wrote an exclusive article for WARC titled “Let the Buyers Beware: In Digital Advertising, Nothing Is as It Seems”. In it he discusses some of the prevalent myths surrounding the digital media ecosystem that can put brands in precarious situations, particularly when it comes to brand safety, and how to avoid them.

Link to the original article: Adfidence CEO on myths surrounding digital media

A reprint of this article can be found below.

The lyrics to Pearl Jam’s ”Nothing As It Seems” are being sung about digital advertising in 2024. Despite the advertising industry’s decades of evolution and multiple announcements trumpeting more transparency, the closer one looks, the more it becomes clear that the reality is often different from what advertisers assume. Much has been said and written about the myriad problems in the digital advertising ecosystem in the last year, on the WARC platform and elsewhere, with a lot of buzz both around the ANA’s Programmatic report and even deeper discussion on how brands can support quality content. 

One thing that comes clear from all of it, is that nothing is at it seems. The ANA report, for instance, explained that there was virtually no difference in the amount of low-quality “made for advertising” site inventory between premium-priced private marketplaces and open marketplace inventory. It’s just one example of how the first step for brands looking to improve the efficacy and transparency of their digital marketing is to bust a few myths. 

This article busts a few more of them, presenting some examples of popular beliefs about how the ecosystem works, and how belief in those myths causes some campaign set-up to work against brands’ best interests. At Adfidence, we see this as another place where brands need to embrace governance, monitoring how they set-up campaigns closely before they run, so that they don’t get less-than-optimum results or worse, find their ads displayed alongside unsuitable content. Genuinely addressing this digital set-up at scale is key to step-changing a brand’s digital marketing. Now that this process can be automated, it’s an opportunity to make it more fruitful than ever before. It also creates an opportunity for CMOs to take back their long-lost control and become true partners to their media agencies, as well as insightful leaders of their company’s hands-on-keyboard teams. 

Myth #1: That global media strategy compliance exists

Devising global media strategy is usually an intense, time-consuming process, but belief that all is going according to plan is often buttressed by periodic reports back to headquarters that everything is going fine. Country representatives or national media vendors usually claim they have full compliance. And they often base their claims on their own belief that this is actually the case.

A careful review of how campaigns and ads are actually set up in advertising platforms like Meta, Google or The Trade Desk quickly reveals this idealized picture of full compliance exists only on paper, or more precisely,  in PowerPoint presentations. There is a long tail of ad set-up deviations and mistakes that ladders up to major discrepancies versus what was intended. For example, you would be surprised at how often ads reach audiences who speak a different language than the one used in the creative they have been served, or how frequently a brand’s ads bombard the consumer above reasonable frequency caps, or how a reputable product’s ads appear on low-quality sites with effectively no future impact on sales. 

Again, the misalignment does not result from bad intentions; ad set-up is complicated and predominantly manual. The environment is fast-paced and promotes speed over quality. There are gaps in training and communication. Moreover, the advertising platforms’ settings can be confusing and encourage suboptimal actions. In today's world, one ends up with lots of opportunities for human mistakes that rarely show up in advertising performance reports. And, because reporting focuses on the aggregates that were delivered, errors remain unnoticed and therefore continue.

Myth #2: That using an ad verification vendor guarantees brand safety

Advertisers often believe they have done everything they should concerning brand safety simply because they contracted an ad verification vendor. While such partners monitor and measure important phenomena such as invalid traffic or actual viewability, they do little to help with pre-campaign ad set-up, so by the time they monitor and measure, any damage has been done and cannot be reversed. Contracting an ad verification vendor is important, but it can also result in a false sense of security. The vendor’s prestige (and high monthly bills) can give an impression that a brand’s media buying is safe and that nothing more needs to be done.

 In fact, there are plenty of additional things brands can and should do to prevent brand safety risks. For example, there are lots of brand-safety settings advertisers can implement while launching their ads and continue to monitor as a campaign runs. Major digital advertising platforms, including Google and Facebook, offer potent free-of-charge options. The favorable set-ups include various block lists, allow lists, sensitive topic exclusions (e.g. gaming, politics), category exclusions (e.g. gambling, sexual content), publishers exclusions, keyword exclusions, inventory filter selections and many more. 

Myth #3: That the defaults in advertising platforms are safe

Having many great options does not mean that simply selecting each platform’s default settings is the best strategy for brands to avoid trouble. Yes, tech giants have years of invaluable experience and endless data. Additionally, there’s an expectation that they act in the best interest of their clients, the advertisers. This belief, however, continues to be shaken by alarming news. Advertisers continue being shocked by discoveries of how default options that look innocent result in undesired results.

A series of reports by the ad quality and transparency firm Adalytics, some of them amplified by The Wall Street Journal, have revealed that the default option is not always the best option. Adalytics’ research showed that brands that chose the default settings not just on YouTube, but also on its Google Video Partners network, ran the risk of their ads appearing on fraudulent sites; and that such impressions were misreported as being legitimate. 

Another report by Adalytics revealed that brands that chose the default of having their ads appear on Google Search Partners may have inadvertently allowed them to appear on websites featuring hardcore pornography, pirated content or that benefitted entities that were in violation of US sanctions. (Following that report, Google brought more transparency to the network, offering impression-level placement reporting for ads placed through Performance Max, the search giant’s AI-driven platform.) Meta’s default placements include Facebook Audience Network, which some advertisers have steered away from due to concerns with respect to brand suitability. The network uses Facebook data for off-platform targeting.

Those who are currently sleeping peacefully because they are assuming safety in default settings may one day wake up to issues dangerous enough to spark consumer boycotts and put marketing executives’ jobs at risk. Modern marketing leadership can no longer be limited to relying on others. Today’s heads of media investment need to comprehend how digital advertising is actually set-up, and which specific settings foster security and protect a brand’s reputation, while not sacrificing productivity.

What to do when everything brands thought was true isn’t

Now that it’s clear the digital media strategies painstakingly created by brands might not be followed, that ad verification partners often do not provide tools potent enough to prevent brand safety issues and are more useful after the fact, and that major advertising platforms may encourage unfavorable behaviors through their default settings, what can we do? 

There is tremendous power in understanding and monitoring the detailed set-up of each of your brands’ digital ads. Reviewing the set-up, comparing it to company-wide media strategy, productivity best practices and brand safety recommendations can step-change marketing performance and vastly reduce risks. It can also enable CMOs to regain control over implementation. Such actions, which at Adfidence we call “campaign setup governance,” are now possible due to emerging technology. Some global advertisers develop automated systems in-house. Some rely on ad tech pioneers like our company.  

Campaign setup governance is an inevitable step for leaders who want to be true partners of their media vendors and modern leaders to their own hands-on-keyboard teams. Mastering ad set-up is an enabler and structure for communicating what is expected, providing constructive instructions on how to meet those expectations, and a way to ensure all goals are met through transparent day-by-day monitoring.

Welcome to the new era of digital marketing. It will favor those who can separate the myths from the truth concerning how the ecosystem works, and also benefit those who are not afraid to learn how its underlying mechanisms work in detail. If you desire transparency, initiate proper governance yourself.

Summary

It discusses some of the prevalent myths surrounding the digital media ecosystem that can put brands in precarious situations, particularly when it comes to brand safety, and how to avoid them.

• There are many things brands and agencies believe to be true about the ecosystem that aren’t, such as that premium marketplaces are far better than open marketplaces when it comes to quality placements. 

• There are many opportunities for human mistakes that don’t show up in advertising performance reports, and because those reports focus on aggregates, some errors remain unnoticed and therefore continue.

• One solution is to pay more attention to how campaigns are set up before they run, which can help brands avoid potential mishaps.

Why it matters

Recently, a bright light has been shown on many of the problems plaguing the digital media ecosystem, ranging from the prevalence of worthless made-for-advertising (MFA) sites to a lack of transparency concerning where ads actually ran, even when dealing with major platforms. This increases the need for advertisers to construct their own guardrails to keep their brands safe. 

Takeaways

• Paying close attention to how campaigns are set up before they run helps brands improve results and can protect them against finding their ads displayed alongside unsuitable content. Technological advancements are making the possibilities of doing this at scale more realistic.

• Contracting an ad verification vendor is important, but can also result in a false sense of security since monitoring and measuring where campaigns have run is inherently going to discover problems only after they’ve happened. 

• In addition to stopping issues before they occur, mastering ad set-up is an enabler and structure for communicating what is expected, providing constructive instructions on how to meet those expectations, and a way to ensure all goals are met through transparent day-by-day monitoring.