Enhanced Brand Protection for Publishers

At AdUnity we take Publisher brand protection very seriously. It is in the interests of the industry as a whole that rogue or unethical advertisers are not given access to the programmatic ecosystem. In our mission to make the advertising industry more ethical we have adopted some of the strictest quality standards and demand partner contracts in the industry. The importance of a tough approach to ad quality is not just about ethics, but also about business performance. It has been shown by academic research (Thota et al, 2012) that when ads are inappropriately matched to a site the results is reduced user satisfaction and approval of the site. No Publisher wants to drive away a loyal audience!

In addition to the more obvious threats to the programmatic ecosystem there are also many occasions when a Publisher has a special commercial, editorial or ethical reasons to block types of advertisers or even specific advertisers. At AdUnity we give them the power to do that. Under the Brand Protection tab Publishers can access the Ad Preview screen. This screen provides a fast way overview of brands attracted to a site or network.

Within each ad preview window there are also statistics for numbers of impressions and bid ranges next to each ad. Importantly, there is also a block button to stop that specific advertiser from appearing again. We also provide the zone name where the ad was served so it can be cross-referenced with standard impression reporting.

We have two additional tools to make custom ad blocking really straight-forward. Firstly, Publisher’s have the ability to block advertisers by category as shown in the Category Blocker tool under the Brand Protection tab. Categories are based on IAB Quality Assurance Guidelines contextual taxonomy.

Secondly, using the Advertiser Blocker tool Publishers can block/blacklist by specific domain with an additional option to block all sub-domains too. The Advertisers that are blocked are shown in the list, but can be reinstated any time with single click to unblock. The combination of these advanced tools means that Publishers have the power to block on both a brand and category level.

At AdUnity we are constantly working to make the programmatic ecosystem work better through building advanced tools and demanding strict quality and ethical standards from our demand partners. We believe that our Brand Protection tools are some the most advanced in the industry and give Publishers real control over ad quality and the ability to enforce their internal advertising policies.

If you need help using Brand Protection, please contact AdUnity Customer support.

References

Thota SC., Song JH. & Biswas A. (2012) Is a website known by the banner ads it hosts? Assessing forward and reciprocal spillover effects of banner ads and host websites. International Journal of Advertising. Warc Ltd, 896-900.