At PubGalaxy, we love specialization and we focus on every aspect of website monetization. One of the most important factors for the long-term success of publishers is, inevitably, brand safety. Hence, the rise of the Ad Quality team within PubGalaxy.
Most Common Ad Quality Issues
Nowadays publishers’ most common problem is mobile ad malware. It represents about 95% of the total, far more compared to the desktop one – 5%. The first reason is that desktop computers have a lot more tools for properly detecting problems like Phishing, Back Button Hijacking or Auto-redirecting.
On the contrary, getting a log on mobile is very difficult for both Android and iOS. This could potentially create a large gap from receiving the problem notification to solving the problem. Some malware is specifically designed to avoid different ways of emulations, which in turn makes it very difficult for us to replicate the problem.
The Importance of Ad Quality
At PubGalaxy, we believe that brand safety is crucial for the success of any publisher. The impact of bad ads, i.e. ads with improper content, propaganda, auto-play or malware, can be detrimental for website owners as such ads affect both audience retention, and the publishers’ ability to financially sustain their properties.
Currently, we are observing approximately 0.02% of fraudulent ads from the total number of ads being served to our customers. Our Ad Quality department is targeted at reducing this type of ads to a minimum and if such ads happen to slip through the filters, our team makes sure to detect the source and block it, so that the issue is eliminated.
The Human Factor
At PubGalaxy we do not just provide one single piece of technology. We take the best of each platform and provide an integrated service tailored to meet the expectations of each customer. Hence, data integration has a key role in the team’s everyday tasks. Furthermore, a large portion of the detected issues come from our proactive approach – about 65% of the cases. That is compared to 35% reactively detected issues.
We give special attention when a problem is reported to us. If one complaint has reached us, there could be hundreds of other people who experienced this same problem but didn’t complain about it. We make sure that we investigate and eliminate the issue for everyone promptly.
A Story To Tell
A few months ago, we had a case with one of our publishers, where we couldn’t replicate the issue that his website visitors reported. We knew, however, that his audience is quite engaged and so we asked the publisher to ask his users to help us identify the problem. We provided them with a special software that would log the users’ browsing history and then they would send it to us.
This is a great example of how users’ engagement helped us find a quick resolution to the issues and how important it is for publishers to build this relationship of trust with their audience.
We rely on clear and open communication with our customers, as sometimes blocking ads can cause a negative effect on their revenue. Still this is the correct solution, as otherwise the improper ads can have a negative effect on the whole website and thus affect number of visits, website ranking etc.
Stay tuned how we help publishers solve the Two Hats Challenge by subscribing to our newsletter – just follow this link.