• by Felicia Greiff , November 23, 2015

Ad quality management platform PubNation has selected SSP (supply-side platform) OpenX for a new partnership to identify and quickly remove ads that Web users don't like. 

PubNation crowdsources user feedback on publishers' sites with buttons beneath ads saying “Report this ad.” The anonymous user can choose why the ad wasn’t acceptable, including reasons such as inappropriate content or auto-playing audio. Then an instant report  identifies the source and automatically delivers a complaint to the ad network, exchange or other party responsible. Ads can be removed within minutes.

With the system's new capabilities with partner OpenX, it's no longer necessary for publishers to communicate with partners first. The ad quality platform will aggregate complaints, send feedback, then work directly with the partner to improve overall efficiency.

Jordan Woods, marketing manager for PubNation, says the ad-quality tool was originally used internally. When the “report” button was added, the number of responses shot up.

“I think users relish the opportunity to give feedback,” Woods says. He adds that while the ad feedback process is currently broken, the new system provides actionable data that could help publishers address issues as they arise.

John Murphy, VP-marketplace quality at OpenX, says the new collaboration will serve as an early warning system to the industry at large. PubNation, he said, can serve information about bad ads, get it quickly to OpenX and see potential threats on the horizon that might not be apparent if the company was simply talking to individual publishers.

And then there's that pesky ad-blocking issue.

“Users are displaying their displeasure on ad quality across the Internet in a direct way,”  Murphy said. “Now is the opportune time to engage users in this conversation about ad quality so we can address whatever concerns they have and hopefully stop, or reverse, the adoption of ad-blocking technologies.”