Ad Quality and Data Leakage: How do you overcome this problem?

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Published by: Rob Beeler , AdMonsters, us
Published on: July 6, 2012

In doing some research, I am finding a number of publishers who are not delving into programmatic buying and RTB because of concerns about ad quality and data leakage. These issues exist and yet so many publishers push forward. How are publishers that are putting impressions into RTB determining that strategically the rewards are worth more than the risks? How would you argue to someone that data leakage or ad quality isn't enough of a problem to stop them from moving forward with RTB and programmatic buying?

Comments

#1 Stephan Pretorius - July 13, 2012

Adding to Ben's comments about AddThis and other widgets: The additional risk with most of these tools is that you cannot negotiate the data terms and conditions (as you might be doing with your advertising T&Cs). Most of these tools bind you to their Standard T&Cs when you elect to place their code on your site.

What's worse (for publisher's who are suckered into this "free tools for data collection" racket) is that these companies are very express about their data collection intentions. Here is an extract from the AddThis standard agreement (section 10): "we may deploy a cookie on our own behalf or on behalf of one of our data partners, to record information about how an End User uses the web, such as the web search that landed the End User on a particular page or categories of the End User's interests. We may use the Data to target advertising toward the End User or authorize others to do the same. ... If you do not cause us to discontinue the placement of our cookies, you grant us a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide and irrevocable right and license to collect, use and disclose the Data as provided in our Privacy Policy and to allow our third party data partners to do the same.”

So they are legally 100% within their rights to collect data for themselves and 3rd parties. Most publishers have simply not known they were doing this, until they started using tools like Data Sentry.

#2 Steven Gold - July 11, 2012

For those monitoring with tools like Krux Data Sentry, do you have a reosurce dedincated to the monitoring and the extensive resources and time it can take to investigate and come to conclusions on whether or not it is acceptable behavior or not? What types of steps are you taking when you find suspicious behavior?

#3 Ben Kneen - July 11, 2012

Yes, we have people looking at it every day, but it doesn't take long, and I'd say it's not as big a job as you might think, particularly if you realize most of the risk is on direct tags, not RTB. Basically, if you don't allow much of anything, problems stick out like sore thumbs, so it's fairly easy to see.

That, and if you have clear data terms, it's an easy conversation to have - "hey, you signed this form, and you are clearly in breach - therefore your tag is suspended until you remedy. If you want to buy the data, X is the price increase (if you want to sell your data, which many do not)." Typically the response we get is "we didn't know, sorry" or, "oh, the creative people must have put that on, we'll get it taken down". It's not been a point of contention. You might also tell clients in advance that you do monitor for those types of things, in which case if there were going to try something underhanded, they won't because you have a deterrent.

On the RTB side it's tough - I'd say that it's the cost of doing business, but if you're blocking certain clients to avoid sales conflict, you're not really exposed to any significant degree. That means you really only have to worry about the networks, and most SSPs have ways to help you monitor that, or you could always cut your own deals with the network and load the network tags into your ad server in a test order that isn't actually live, but is still picked up by an automated scanning tool. So that's what I'd do. Someone could take 10 - 15 minutes each day to review, and that would be all you really need. They could pass the info to your contract / sales folks, who could address with the client.

#4 Amnon Siev - July 11, 2012

Hi Rob,
I’m the VP of Product Management at Geoedge and we are dealing with challenge in the last year.
First I mostly agree with Ben reply. Here are my 2 cents:

This problem could actually be divided into two separate requirements. First is visibility, seeing and capturing all the ads and landing pages, that will run on your site. With RTB the numbers of different offers and ads that would display on your site could dramatically increase. In addition they may change very often as buyers’ changes their bidding. This becomes more dramatic if you sell traffic from different geo locations.

Assuming you do have a way to capture all these offers, the second requirement is making sure that all these offers and banners comply with your policies and don’t contain and data leakage elements. Usually, data leakage could happen using one of these two techniques: First, fire a pixel when the ads load that will eventually place a cookie. Second, by adding a redirect link between the Ad click URL and the landing page.
To make thing even more complicated some sophisticated players will initially behave properly and after a while will change their click URLs path and may start collecting data using one of the methods mentioned before.

Taking all these factors into account, manual screening and enforcement is quite challenging. The good news is that there are many good technology providers out there that address this problem. Would be happy to tell more about our solutions directly.

#5 David Sky - July 10, 2012

I work for a large auto classifieds publisher and we have been using Krux Digital's Data Sentry product for the last 6 months.

So far it has been a revelation for our company. The system is easy to use and a very easy method for keeping track of all data collection across site.

Along with 3rd party tags, publishers should be very wary of social media widgets. Any sharing tools eg AddThis or commenting widgets eg Disqus are free services but base their business model on collecting and on selling data.

#6 Ben Kneen - July 11, 2012

Very true and often overlooked because they are implemented by editorial side staff who are rarely cognizant of the data risks these services pose. This is a good reason to implement a process with IT by which it is difficult to post 3rd party scripts or pixels on the site without routing through Ops, or having some kind of regular cross-team meeting to approve those elements as a group.

#7 Ben Kneen - July 9, 2012

Well the first thing I would say is that publishers are far, far more at risk from data leakage on regular 3rd party tags from direct clients than RTB. So these publishers are kidding themselves if they think staying out of RTB is protecting them from data leakage.

Direct advertisers are much more likely to value site data, and they are also the ones most likely to use it to the publisher's detriment by buying that audience via the exchanges, without compensating publishers. So step one would be to setup protections against that - add data riders to your Ts&Cs, and look for in-house or external systems to monitor your tags. Adometry, the Media Trust, Krux, Adobe, Advalidation, and others offer solutions around this.

On the RTB front, the first thing I would say is that the buying is so incredibly fragmented, that you really don't have much to worry about from 99% of the buyers. Last month I saw over 12,000 advertisers trying to place a bid, a little less than that won, but most of the dollars were spent by less than 100 buyers. So it's the classic long tail pattern - do you really care if that florist in Boca that bought 18 impressions cookies you? No, of course not, they aren't buying your site, they're buying a cookie pool, and they don't care where they find it. That's what a lot of RTB looks like right now - cookie RT that happens to get found and bought on your site.

Next is of the advertisers that buy enough volume to matter, you can easily monitor them, because it's a short list. You've got the controls to block who you want, or allow with conditions who you want. From my perspective, I'm more concerned about latency from the sheer obnoxious volume of cookie dropping. IMO the exchanges, SSPs, and DSPs should agree on some kind of limit or standards around cookie dropping. Google has them and enforces them on their exchange, so I don't see why it can't happen for the rest of the marketplace.

If you want to manage data leakage, pay the most attention to direct tags, watch your top 100 advertiser list in RTB, and cut your own agreements with networks if you accept that as a demand source, and monitor with whatever tools you use to monitor your direct tags. The networks are also more likely to benefit from publisher specific data, because they can consolidate that data across lots of advertisers and are in the business of optimization.