Posts Tagged ‘Ad Quality’

The Language of AdCheq

May 3rd, 2011

Saata Bangura

REVV, Real-time bidding, REVV Marketplace … AdCheq? We’re all familiar with the aforementioned pieces of the Rubicon Project puzzle. AdCheq, on the other hand, isn’t a technology we’ve often discussed externally, but it plays a pivotal role in how REVV manages and facilitates publishers’ advertiser blocklists. Adcheq captures, identifies and, with the help of our team of experts, classifies new ad creatives that are served into the REVV platform against 104 industries and 10 ad quality categories (including Adult/Provocative, Shaky/Flashy, Belly Fat, etc.). In addition, AdCheq enables REVV to develop and maintain advertiser profiles within the platform – all necessary for protecting publishers’ direct sales channels, user experience and brands.

How does AdCheq fit in to the REVV platform for publishers? First, publishers define their business rules around selling their inventory through sales channels – controls including blocklists, geographic rights, transparency settings and pricing floors, for example. Once those rules are set, the REVV brand protection toolset scans, harvests and classifies all creatives that run through the platform – this is where AdCheq comes in.

How does AdCheq work? The process begins when ad creatives show up for the first time within an ad tag. Each new creative, or media file is individually labeled. AdCheq has enabled some 450,000 media files to be classified since September 2010. When necessary, ads are marked with ad quality categories, such as Shaky/Flashy or Belly Fat. When publishers want to block ads with certain content and/or from advertisers from running on their site(s), the accurate labeling and flagging of the ads in AdCheq is crucial. With over 2,000 new ads running through the REVV platform every day, AdCheq ensures unwanted ads – like belly fat ads don’t “squeeze” their way through.

Once an ad has been labeled, it goes through the verification process. In this step, each ad is reviewed twice and classified using AdCheq by real live humans working for the Rubicon Project from our HQ in Los Angeles, as well as from locations around the world. Then our Editorial/Ad Quality Team goes through these labeling options to choose the best one, using REVV’s ad quality standards as a guide. Accuracy and relevance are key here – it is mission critical to capture and identify all the information about each ad correctly to ensure that publishers do not see ads they’ve blocked, for any reason, on their sites.

There are approximately 10,000 advertisers with approved profiles in the AdCheq system, with hundreds getting added each week. These advertisers that are pulled from tags across the REVV platform have detailed profiles in AdCheq that include pertinent information, such as the website URL, company logo, all past-submitted media files (creatives) and industries in which the advertiser does business. Once all of this information is cataloged, the advertiser becomes an approved advertiser. From this point forward, all creatives are associated in the system with the advertiser they represent, along with all the other classification information about the creative itself.

Once all the information about the creative and the associated is designated with AdCheq, that data is stored within the REVV Helix database, which enables ongoing ad monitoring, filtering and blocking. It is because of the classification powered by AdCheq that publishers using REVV can limit or prevent the appearance of specific advertisers, industries, subsidiaries and holding companies – along with ad quality types, sizes, etc. – to avoid conflict with their direct sales teams’ efforts and ensure the publisher’s desired user experience.

Today, AdCheq is one of the many internal tools used at the Rubicon Project to manage brand safety issues for publishers. With continued innovation, there are plans in our current product roadmap to release AdCheq for direct use by publishers in the near future. Stay tuned for more updates on this product and many other safety and security product innovations in the coming months.

Are You Armed for the Holidays?

November 19th, 2010

Duc Chau

Just as a homeowner needs insurance to protect her against unforeseen disasters, a publisher needs to be sure their business and users are protected from malvertising. These attacks peak on weekends and holidays, when technical experts aren’t around to identify the source. In almost all cases, identification and resolution of the malware attack doesn’t happen until considerable
damage has already been done. And regardless of the technique used by the perpetrators, or the channel through which the exploit occurred (we’ve seen them through ad networks and direct-sold campaigns in equal measure), the problem for a publisher’s ad operations group is the same.

A publisher that doesn’t have protection in place is at the greatest risk of malvertising and infecting their most valuable commodity – their users.  We know firsthand from these publishers that it’s not worth playing the odds. Every minute that a threat goes undetected, more and more of a publisher’s user base is affected, resulting in angry users, decreased brand trust and significant churn in both users and revenue.

Since we rolled out SiteScout AdStream Protection™ 5.2 this summer, we’ve seen some surprising – and scary – things:

  • 89 billion ad impressions monitored
  • More than 63 million monthly unique users at risk from exploits prevented by SiteScout technology
  • The majority of exploits have occurred on weekends

With publisher revenue at its peak in Q4, ad streams are at even greater risk. Threats and attacks find their way in through ad exchanges, ad networks and direct ad campaigns where bad guys use many techniques including hacking servers, submitting malicious ads directly, or impersonating legitimate people or companies, and publishers eager to capture increased ad spend that accompanies the holidays might be more busy than usual, and less likely to double-check the validity of a buyer. Fewer resources, more vacation days, and more hectic schedules create a perfect storm for risk of malware.

No one likes these kinds of surprises. To learn more about malvertising and what you can do to keep your site safe, download our free whitepaper, “Best Practices: Malware & Online Security.”