The digital audio market continues to show steady growth, with ad spending predicted to hit $5.87 billion this year, an increase of 20% yearly and a nearly 90% jump since 2021. Advertisers aren’t the only ones flocking to audio, though. The dollars they bring with them can draw the attention of bots from both bad actors and genuine services, generating invalid traffic.
Advertisers who run on invalid inventory are paying for a service they are not actually receiving, which can result in a waste of resources and negatively impact their ROI. Being the leader in digital audio, AdsWizz knows the importance of staying ahead of these bots and has the tools and subject matter expertise to address the uniqueness of the audio environment.
With invalid traffic filtering, we are taking proactive steps to build comprehensive safeguards to ensure our clients’ audio advertising campaigns are bot-free.
Invalid Traffic (IVT) Filtering on the Marketplace
Our clients expect to have their ads served to genuine human customers rather than bots or automated scripts. They want to buy with confidence and trust, knowing their campaign will be free of IVT.
To provide this confidence, AdsWizz partnered with Human Security, a Media Rating Council (MRC) accredited cybersecurity company that stops digital fraud across the buyer’s journey, to detect and mitigate IVT. The partnership involves integrating HUMAN’s Programmatic Ad Fraud Defense solution to provide pre-bid mitigation for marketplace inventory, enabling the SSP to prevent invalid opportunities from being presented to buyers while protecting working media dollars.
The solution employs 2,500 dynamic network, device, and behavioral signals, parsing them through 350 technical, statistical, and machine-learning algorithms. These are regularly updated based on the traffic patterns HUMAN observes via AdsWizz and the internet. HUMAN’s validation loop marries pre and post-bid data to ensure accuracy by constantly strengthening detection to stay one step ahead of fraudsters.
General Controls and Inventory Quality Reviews
Risky environments can be detrimental to audio investments. The AdsWizz Audio Marketplace, a digital exchange for advertisers and publishers to buy and sell audio advertising, is continuously curated to offset these risks. Along with automated filtering technologies, AdsWizz has transparent processes to vet, certify, and manage publishers with ongoing monitoring.
AdsWizz has implemented an inventory qualification process, allowing buyers to select from a large pool of premium streaming and podcast publishers. Our teams carefully qualify each publisher and perform advanced automated checks and technical verification on privacy and addressability. Following certification, ongoing marketplace monitoring gets carried out to ensure campaign normalcy.
Empowering Secure and Effective Digital Audio Advertising
Our platform and marketplace have brand safety capabilities that allow users to exclude specific audience categories and topics. This provides better control over the path of their ads. Our blocklisting powers can also easily intercept fraudulent domains, malicious IPs, and user agents. For Second Screen retargeting campaigns, we have integrated with various security partners to embed a blocklist of up to 40,000 domains. These URLs are frequently updated to ensure they catch the latest threats.
Recognized by the Trustworthy Accountability Group and awarded the TAG Certified Against Fraud Seal, we are deeply committed to combating fraud and invalid traffic by promoting greater transparency in the digital advertising supply chain.
As the world of digital audio advertising continues to grow, so do the challenges of combating IVT. Fortunately, AdsWizz is at the forefront of this battle, offering robust capabilities, including AI-driven resources to detect invalid traffic, verification of the “audibility” of audio ads, a continuously curated marketplace, advanced inventory qualification processes, and blocklisting tools. These measures help ensure that ad campaigns are effective, safe, and secure.
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- Want to learn more about how to fight ad fraud? Check out A 4-Step Plan to Fight Ad Fraud by Brendan Kelly, Director of Ad Quality Measurement at SXM Media.
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by Maria Breza
Vice President, Audience Data Operations & Ad Quality Measurement at SXM Media and AdsWizz
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