Google has teamed up with Integral Ad Science in its efforts to squelch the uproar over brand safety, according to Marketing Land. The titan search and ad platform is also hoping to ease the ad boycott that began several weeks ago first in the UK then spread into the US. Finally, another aspect of online advertising to be examined by IAS will be viewer exposure time.
The groundswell of complaints over bad-ads came to the fore last month when large brands boycotted Google and YouTube because they were placed adjacent to extremist and racist ads. Offensive content has been a point of controversy for years in addition to fake news and ad fraud.
IAS will focus on Google’s YouTube channels as a third-party ad placement monitor. The internationally known firm works with over 4,000 companies including other online platforms like Facebook and AOL. Spokesperson Maria Pousa described the impetus of the complaint as having socio-political implications, and the uproar has spread globally.
Among the offensive content, the top seven issues were centered around content with adult themes, alcohol, hate speech, illegal downloads, illegal drugs, offensive language, and violence.
Additionally, bot software has been added as part of the problem associated with fake news. Home pages have 88 percent more ad fraud than article pages;additionally, the risk of ad fraud increases after midnight.
Time exposure in ads has been brought under the IAS microscope with reports that may lead to some changes in the standards of viewability. According IAS, many viewers are given little, some insufficient, exposure to brand ads. Overall, many users (50-65 percent) view ads for about five seconds or less. Further, about 60-80 percent of viewers get no more than two impressions and of these about 70-85 percent get one viewable impression.
