Procter & Gamble’s Chief Brand Officer, Marc Pritchard sounded the call for industry action when he cautioned, “[With] fraud as high as 20%, who knows if [consumers are] even seeing our ads.” Indeed, digital ad fraud totaled $12.5 billion in 2016. And the toll is expected to soar to $16.4 billion in 2017.
We commend Mr. Pritchard for taking the industry to task. PubMatic has a long-standing commitment to transparency and ensuring publishers maintain control of their ad decisioning. To keep our clients, partners and industry informed of PubMatic’s stand against fraud with a money-back guarantee, we wanted to detail our Fraud-Free Program here.
PubMatic actions taken
At PubMatic, we understand the importance of providing a transparent and brand-safe marketplace for buyers. Our team knows what it takes to build a fraud-free ecosystem. Between our industry-leading product innovations and ongoing operational focus, we’re doing just that.
PubMatic has no tolerance for fraud on our platform. We strive to protect advertiser’s trust by maintaining a clean media buying platform with the highest inventory quality and brand safety standards.
In addition to our proprietary technology, we partner with MRC-accredited inventory quality vendors, such as IAS and White Ops. They conduct brand-safety checks and inventory screening across multiple formats and platforms. We view them as partners, sharing data and feedback to keep ahead of fraud schemes.
The future is made by those who make it. To live in the clean ecosystem we all desire, we need to take bold actions. To this end, PubMatic is proud of the following initiatives:
Fraud-Free Program:
PubMatic is pleased to offer a fraud-free program for our demand partners. Within the program, if fraud is detected, our demand partners won’t have to pay for it.
PubMatic will promptly provide a credit to our demand partners for any suspect traffic served by PubMatic provided certain criteria are met.
Quality Compliance Team:
We have a dedicated global Inventory Quality team who adamantly believes a clean environment benefits everyone. We take a rigorous approach to eliminating ad fraud. Our operational processes help us combat ad fraud, as it happens, and prevent it from existing in the first place.
Through daily reporting reviews, we identify issue(s) and communicate with the publisher to develop a plan of action. The IQ team reviews all fraud reports and investigates all fraud complaints from DSPs before relaying findings out through the customer success management teams. If improvements are not seen within a defined timeframe, we move to pause or terminate the account.
ads.txt Outreach:
The urgency of ads.txt compliance has only grown in recent weeks. Google’s programmatic buying arm, DBM, announced after November 1, 2017, they will no longer buy inventory from a publisher through a third party (for example, an SSP). The exception is if the third party is declared an authorized re-seller through the inclusion of their details available in the ads.txt file.
PubMatic is a vocal supporter of increased transparency in the programmatic landscape. Thus, in the domains where we manage monetization, we have pushed for ads.txt adoption.
Our global customer success management teams reached out to our clients in preparation of DBM’s shift. Additionally, we have shared an ads.txt implementation guide with a step-by-step walkthrough of the process.
Conclusion
It will take all of us to stamp out ad fraud. We offer a call to arms to our ad tech family members to band together with fraud-free programs and similar initiatives.
With our publisher-first focus, ad fraud goes against our very mission. Every ad dollar spent on fraudulent inventory is a dollar not spent on legitimate publishers producing high-quality content.
PubMatic will continue to fight the good fight and we urge our supply-chain partners to join us in helping to ensure the programmatic ecosystem is clean and Mr. Pritchard’s call is answered.
