• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, November 4, 2011

The Interactive Advertising Bureau Thursday released a set of proposed industry guidelines for the conduct of so-called ad verification systems and services, and is seeking public comment on their adoption. The IAB, which described the guidelines as an “advanced framework” designed to ensure that a common set of methods and practices are used by various ad verification services, said they were developed in conjunction with industry ratings watchdog, the Media Rating Council (MRC).

Verification services have always been an important component of the advertising industry, whether they were manual methods for analogue media like print and out-of-home, or electronic methods for TV and radio, but the emergence of new content and potential liability issues for advertisers on the Internet has spawned a new cottage industry of suppliers with a variety of methods and practices. Generally, the verification services provide some form of “proof of performance” that online ads ran as ordered and scheduled, but many also ensure that a brand’s ad messages do not appear on sites of pages that might also publish content deemed inappropriate for brands to be associated with. Some also track, report or block advertising impressions on pages containing malicious code, which could represent a potential liability for advertisers and agencies.

“The volume of advertising impressions served at any given moment is enormous, and this volume makes it difficult for agencies to verify and measure the success of campaigns,” stated Steve Sullivan, vice president-digital supply chain solutions at the IAB. “The new technologies that cycle regularly through the industry complicate the verification process further, adding urgency to the need to develop a set of common, uniform guidelines that apply equally to all stakeholders in the ad verification process.”

The guidelines cover:

• Ad-serving prevention (“ad blocking”) may be used in instances where the relevant domain or page-level URL is already on a blocking list, for competitive separation and to prevent fraud. Ad blocking should be built into ad serving systems, so decisions are made pre-serve.
• Nested iFrames are often recognized as legitimate technology, but the limited visibility around what is served into these iFrames can cause ad serving issues to go undetected. For that reason, ad verification vendors should have procedures to classify and report the extent to which advertising served into iFrames from other domains has been appropriately executed. In addition, the general nature of the verification tools used to view iFrame content should be disclosed. Moreover, it is recommended that the use of nested iFrames is minimized.
• Geo-targetingIP-based processes can vary in quality based on the geo-targeting vendor used. Geo-targeting vendors, therefore, should be encouraged to subject their processes to independent auditing.