The Rubicon Project has released its Ad Quality Protection Program, which is designed to help keep unwanted ads, such as those containing adult content or promoting competitive brands, off of publishers’ Web sites.
“If an ad network puts an ad on a site that a publisher doesn’t want, the publisher could terminate the ad network relationship in a heartbeat,” said Frank Addante, founder and CEO of The Rubicon Project, based in Los Angeles. “Publishers need to be able to turn off specific ads — not the entire network, which could lose them tons of money.”
The program can auto-detect and flag inappropriate ads based on image content, such as excessive flesh. Proactive screening pauses any offending ad tags until its content is reviewed, and 24-hour operations support is offered. Gannett and Salon.com are currently using the technology.
This marketwide release comes along with Rubicon’s third quarter online ad market report, which shows that costs per thousand in the news and reference vertical rose 36%. The study also found that while page views, unique visits and time spent on social networking sites remained high, CPMs decreased as supply of ad inventory grows faster than demand.
“More dollars are flowing into the market through these networks, which are providing a lot of new technologies, efficiencies and business models to move money online,” Addante said.
