DoubleVerify is one of the leading online advertising verification companies in the world. According to the company’s website, DoubleVerify verifies 35 billion advertising impressions per month for a diverse clientele of leading marketers, including hundreds of Fortune 500 companies.
This week, DoubleVerify announced the launch of its Advertising Fraud Detection Lab with the goal of identifying malicious sites, malware, spyware, and other forms of non-compliance that lead to inflated ad impression reporting. Unfortunately, these activities are not new and they show no signs of going away. DoubleVerify aims to reduce the amount of money advertisers pay for wasted ad impressions and the legal implications these fraudulent activities can lead to.
DoubleVerify plans to use its own technology combined with a team of experts from security and anti-virus organizations to research the online advertising environment and present their results after three months in the form of a white paper with the intention of helping online advertisers and legitimate publishers identify fraud risks and ensure brands reputations’ aren’t negatively impacted by potentially fraudulent activities. You can read more in the official DoubleVerify press release.
Few marketers would argue that there is a problem related to online advertising wasted impressions. The question is whether or not DoubleVerify’s research and resulting report will help the online advertising industry as a whole or simply create more clients for DoubleVerify’s services. Certainly, this type of research has the potential to help an industry that has struggled against fraudulent activities in the past without the ability to offer proof of such activities. Let’s hope that DoubleVerify’s Advertising Fraud Detection Lab offers some sort of help, or better yet — a solution.
What do you think? Is a fraud detection service that can work across the online advertising industry likely to hit the scene anytime soon? Leave a comment and share your thoughts and predictions.
Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
