ADTECH Ad Server Solutions for Publishers, Ad Networks, Agencies and Advertisers - Edition No. 8 U.S. -> Reliability of the Figures

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Reliability of the Figures

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Reliability of the Figures

The press have recently covered hot topic of click fraud and counting discrepancies extensively – it’s an advertiser’s nightmare. As ad server provider we take these issues very seriously. It’s our responsibility to make sure click fraud doesn’t happen so that our clients are able to have confidence and trust in their data.

Media enterprises have always haggled over their audience figures and television stations have no way of proving how many people watch their programming. Print media juggle around their print runs. The Internet by contrast offers far more specific figures on supplied banners, clicks and duration of stay. But this especially is a source of lively debate.

Publishers, media agencies, advertisers and ad serving providers; while all of them track ad serving, they invariably come up with different results. This is normal and stems from a number of causes including pop-up blockers, sluggish servers, incorrectly programmed advertising media. What aggrieves the industry more though are the high counting discrepancies. Deviations of below five per cent are regarded as exemplary. Figures in the higher single-digit range are also accepted. However, discrepancies in excess of ten per cent necessitate close examination.

The best way to reduce discrepancies is to employ standardized counting methods. ADTECH has acknowledged the problem in the industry to the extent of having developed a specific ad serving function in our technology that enables us to analyze any suspicious data. It’s a quick a robust method of viewing the data to confirm or deny any potential click fraud. It’s a function every publisher/advertiser should be asking for when looking for a trustworthy solution. The IAB has defined globally applicable measurement guidelines in collaboration with ADTECH. Their implementation will ensure reliable values when recording ad impressions.

These measurement guidelines recommend the following measures:
Cache busting
Temporary saving of advertising media, which have already been saved to the browser or proxy cache, could give rise to counting discrepancies. ADTECH uses a variety of techniques to avoid this, the most common being to add a random number to each ad request or, in the case of ADTECH, a timestamp. Here the browser requests the advertising media again from the ad server whenever the page is loaded rather than retrieving it from the cache.

Filtering
Page views by software programs such as robots, spiders or Web crawlers (non-human activities) may force up the number of ad requests artificially. ADTECH filters out these impressions on the basis of blacklists and robot lists issued by the IAB, meaning that they are not included in the report. This also applies to bad requests that are only partially received by the ad server.

View count
Unlike reporting ad impressions, view count logs users’ ad views. The procedure gauges whether a banner was successfully displayed in the browser.

The described resources are aimed at reducing counting discrepancies, although they will never be able to eliminate them completely. Occasional differences in figures will occur owing to comparing apples with pears as it were. In order to clarify such discrepancies ADTECH’s customer service makes use of detailed troubleshooting. In this regard, it is easiest to verify whether:
- the reporting periods are identical
- the number of placements contained in the reports to be compared tally
- only one or several campaigns are running on a single placing

Where redirects are concerned, the client service managers review the reporting data from all involved ad server systems. A breakdown accurate down to the hour helps to trace ad serving irregularities. Comparison of counting methods can also reveal the causes of errors.

If the campaign is still underway, client service also employs debuggers in troubleshooting on the booked webpage. Tools like this analyze the source of the browser’s content incl. the banners and the duration of the requests.

Certification and standardization are the best way of avoiding excessively high counting discrepancies and the subsequent search for causes. ADTECH is taking the lead with its IAB certificate. The seal of quality, which is reviewed annually, confirms the highest degree of transparency and precision when it comes to ADTECH’s ad serving and reporting of display ads via the ad servers. ADTECH’s stance on this standardization drive is absolutely clear: “Any kind of standardization will serve to increase our industry’s credibility,” sums up CEO Dirk Freytag. “That can only be to our benefit.”

More information:
Please complete our contact form, send an e-mail to or give us a call at +1 212-426-1700.

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