Okay, let’s face it: ad fraud is real. Your ads DO get published on the wrong websites. They also DO get clicked by bots. And no, you are not alone.
Ad fraud with 38% is among the leading programmatic ad challenges, according to the 2020 eMarketer industry report.
In 2020 alone, the ad fraud caused the industry a monetary loss of $35 billion worldwide.
And according to Statista, TrafficGuard, eMarketer, World Federation of Advertisers, and others, costs related to digital advertising fraud worldwide will increase (dramatically) in years to come.
The solution? Ad verification.
What is Ad Verification?
Ad verification is a verifying process that allows advertisers and marketers to check if their ads are being displayed as intended – on the right website, in the proper context, and in the right area of the page, and to the desired audience.
Importance of Ad Verification for Advertisers
Ad verification helps advertisers save their budget allocated to marketing and improve their ad efficiency.
The verification process assures advertisers that their ads are being delivered in accordance with the terms agreed upon with the publisher. It also urges publishers to stick to the best ad publishing practices knowing that they are being tracked.
Not only this, but ad verification is also important to maintain your reputation. For instance, if your ad is displayed next to offensive or inappropriate content, it may signal the users that your brand is endorsing that content, thus hurting your reputation.
Importance of Ad Verification for Publishers
Although ad verification is typically used by advertisers, it helps publishers minimize the chances of running fraudulent ads on their websites. They get to control the kind of ads that are displayed on their website.
Back in the old days, publishers used to approve the ads before publishing them on their websites. Fast forward to today, as the ad publication has grown by leaps and bounds and it has become difficult for the publishers to manage the ad quality.
By implementing ad verification techniques, publishers can ensure that their websites are not running any ads that are deemed inappropriate, promote illegal products, are malicious, or target bad products.
Considering the growing importance of ad verification, several ad verification companies have sprung into the market that aims to eliminate ad fraud from the industry.
List of Top Ad Verification Companies
Join hands with these top ad verification companies to ensure that your ad is served the way you intended it.
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Integral Ad Science
Integral Ad Science, formerly known as AdSafe Media, is an ad tech company founded in 2009. Employing more than 700 employees, the company has a presence in 13 countries.
In addition to helping you verify your ad, Integral Ad Science also enables you to optimize the verified ad opportunities, thus ensuring that you get better results. It also provides access to key metrics to ensure that your marketing strategies align with the results.
The company is among the first companies that were awarded the TAG Certified Against Fraud Seal, so you can be sure to have the best insights. The company uses proprietary technology that tests the traffic based on two parameters – sophisticated invalid traffic SIVT and general invalid traffic SIVT.
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Double Verify
Next on the list of the best ad verification companies is Double Verify. The company is known for its top-notch campaign effectiveness and online media verification solutions geared for agencies, advertising networks, brand marketers, digital publishers, and demand-side platforms.
Double Verify aims to ensure that the advertising meets all the quality standards regarding campaign transparency and performance. The company claims to be driven by a mission of building a better advertising industry. It helps companies make the most out of their online advertising campaigns by providing them with the utmost transparency in their digital investment.
DV comes with 10+ years of experience identifying and blacklisting ad frauds and claims to catch 2M+ bots and malware devices daily.
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GeoEdge Analytics
GeoEdge is a reputable ad verification company that is known for its comprehensive set of ad verification solutions. In addition to providing you with operational alerts, the company also offers the best-in-industry malware protection.
GeoEdge’s ad quality protection monitors your ad inventory 24/7 and blocks any malicious activity much before any damage can occur. The result – you get clean ads that are served to the right users at the right time.
The company equips you with a decision-making algorithm on the bid level powered by its robust multilayer detection engine. All thanks to its patented ad quality technology, the company provides you with zero-day security detection along with ad content management and sexually explicit ad/LP monitoring.
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White Ops
This list of the best ad verification and programmatic advertising companies definitely cannot be completed without mentioning White Ops. Being a global leader in bot mitigation, fraud protection, and bot prevention, the company claims to verify more than 5,000,000,000,000 online interactions every week!
Essentially, this is a cybersecurity company that protects enterprises across the globe from bots that act like humans when visiting websites, click on ads and commit fraud.
White Ops provides real-time insights and identifies fraud on an ad server within milliseconds. However, the company is sure that it doesn’t end up blocking any traffic unless it is convinced that the traffic is fake.
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Pixalate
Next on our list is Pixalate. It is another comprehensive ad verification and ad fraud detection company that helps you fight against 15 types of fraud. The company is the first company to get accredited by MRC for detecting and filtering invalid traffic.
Pixalate is a cross-channel fraud intelligence company that works with publishers to minimize invalid traffic and enhance ad placement quality. It provides its services on all major platforms like display, video, and app.
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Forensiq by Impact
Being founded in 2010, Forensiq by Impact is another company that is making lives easier for advertisers, ad agencies, and publishers, one at a time. The company aims to eliminate bad actors and malicious activities from the industry and promote quality traffic.
Forensiq utilizes the best-in-class technology equipped with machine learning to identify bot traffic on the go. The company ensures that you do not promote fraud affiliate ad networks, pay for dead-ends, fake views, and fund fake installs.
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Trust Metrics
Here is another honorable mention to the list of the best ad verification vendors. Trust Metrics equips publishers with more than 1500 variables to analyze, optimize, and categorize their inventory. The platform provides insights on both mobile and web and helps you run a high-quality website.
Trust Metrics also helps you compare your website with competitors while ensuring your brand safety and assuring that your website is not prey to ad fraud.
Additionally, you can scan your website with Trust Metrics and get a score. The platform also provides you with critical information on how you can improve your score.
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Confiant
Formerly known as ClarityAd Inc, Confiant is a rapidly growing ad fraud prevention and ad validation company. The company offers a range of interesting digital products to both publishers and advertisers.
It can detect and notify your forced ad redirect, cookie stuffing, in-banner video ads, pop-ups and pop-unders, and more. The company also offers you a 14-day free trial to help you test the waters before going full-fledged.
Confiant claims to protect more than 30K websites. It has blocked more than 8B attacks and has monitored 1T+ ads to date.
How to Combine Ad Verification Tools with Your Ad Tech Stack
If you use an ad tech stack provider by some vendor, you can ask their sales or support team if their software has such integration. Highly likely, most of the reputable ad tech providers have already partnered with some of the companies I listed above. In case you use an in-house-built solution where integration is not available, you might need to integrate it with your solution yourself.
There’s, however, a compromise between building an entirely new platform from scratch and using a ready-made solution, or a so-called white-label DSP. Here, you can have it both ways: the platform that belongs to you along with in-built ad verification tools, integrated before by the software provider.
All-in-all, ad verification, and validation tools are the very basic goods in the world of ad serving to keep yourself safe. You can surely ignore them, but it will be no wonder when you fall prey to fraudsters pretty quickly. This technology is especially relevant to ad networks that are accountable for the traffic and creative quality and otherwise will lose a large part of their clients.
About the author:
Kateryna Novatska is a Head of Content at Epom who implements unconventional content marketing practices for B2B companies. She has a 4-year experience in programmatic advertising and hands-on experience with 5+ ad tech platforms. Contact her via LinkedIn.
