The Wall Street Journal
It’s 10 P.M.: Do You Know Where Your Online Ads Are?
October 13, 2009, 8:46 AM ET
Click fraud, in which a person or automated computer program clicks on ads repeatedly to make them seem more effective than they are, has long marred Web advertising.
But marketers often buy display ads based on the number of times they are loaded onto a page, rather than the number of clicks they get. That model was harder to sabotage, until the last few years, when the invisible-ad phenomenon emerged.
The problem has given rise to a group of companies, such as DoubleVerify, Anchor Intelligence and AdXpose, which audit online-ad campaigns for marketers. These companies say they regularly find instances of fraud or other pitfalls, ranging from invisible ads to marketers buying ads on pages that could include inappropriate or risqué content.
“There really is no way of checking to make sure that your ads are showing up where they should be,” said Mitchell Weinstein, director of ad operations at Interpublic Group ad agency Universal McCann.
In August, Universal McCann started working with DoubleVerify, which has found several instances of ads for McCann’s clients showing up next to inappropriate content, Mr. Weinstein said. “That is wasted money on our end and our clients’ end.”
Concerned about their reputation, some ad networks have started to offer guarantees of where marketers’ ads will end up. Undertone Networks promises advertisers space on high-quality Web sites — and that it will pay them $50,000 if it doesn’t come through.
