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Why is Ad Quality Important?

By Guandi

March 23, 2022

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The Independent Advertising Bureau (IAB) sets the digital advertising industry standards with ad quality metrics for stakeholders in the ad supply chain. An ad quality solution can play a key role in growing your ad networks business. In this blog post we will answer the question: Why is ad quality important for both ad networks and publishers and why ads should be of otimum quality.

What is ad quality?

There are several sources that determine the quality of an ad supply chain, including but not limited to: the advertising category, relevance, creatives, landing pages, user's visiting experience, user's feedback after interacting with the ads and expected CTR. Some big platforms such as Google, Amazon and Facebook have their own scoring or ranking system for ad quality that help their users diagnose and improve campaign performance. 

Why is Ad Quality Important?

Figure 1: Ad quality score system of Google Ads

How to Detect Ad Quality

Apart from ad networks manually checking campaigns with a dedicated Compliance team, there are also automated technology solutions such as AdSecure. AdSecure is powered by crawler technologies that scan ad creatives, landing pages, webpages, urls and redirects, interacting with the entire supply chain just like an end user would do. 

As mentioned, digital ads should always meet the IAB industry standards,  AdSecure offers a complete solution for ad networks and publishers to scan ad campaigns to ensure that they do. AdSecure clients can check campaigns before they launch with AdSecure’s IAB Standards tool which verifies:

Ad Dimension: Scans for the correct pixel x pixel size, otherwise the ad creative will appear squashed when displayed.

Ad Weight: Scans to ensure it does not exceed the recommended maximum KB both on initial load and sub load.

Ad Request Count: Scans to check it does not exceed more than 10 requests.

Ad File Compression: Scans to check that all assets are compressed to the recommended file compression.

Benefits for Advertisers

Higher conversion rates: Poor-quality ads will harm ad performance, end users are less likely to click on an ad which will affect advertiser ROI. Optimized online ads and good Landing Pages will result in higher conversions. 

Reliable testing: Advertisers always test different creatives against one another to see which ones receive a higher performance from end users. If your test advertisements are not of the best quality, then it is difficult to get a ‘true’ performance diagnosis. High quality ads ensure better optimization to maximize ROI.

Consumer trust: Most ad campaigns are selling some sort of product or offer, which means the ad and landing page has to look professional and be of high quality or an end consumer is unlikely to buy anything.

Passing Compliance checks: Advertisers spend a lot of time designing ad creatives, marketing campaigns, landing pages, etc, if these are of low quality an Ad Network or Publisher’s Compliance checks will not allow the campaign to pass, wasting valuable design time, by providing high quality marketing materials, Advertisers will have no Compliance issues.

Benefits for Publishers

Quality control: High quality ads ensure that all ads shown on a Publisher’s website ensure a ‘quality’ ad experience for the site’s end users.

Higher revenues: High quality ads get more end user clicks, which increases the value of a site’s ad zones. The higher the CTR the more competitive the site’s ad zones are, because Advertisers will pay a higher bid for high performing ad zones.

A better user experience: User experience is of paramount importance to all Publishers. Displaying high quality ads ensures the site’s visitors have an enjoyable browsing experience and are more likely to interact with the ads as well as viewing the content.

Better Google ranking: Google blocks ads that are slow to load, if ads meet IAB weight standards, they are fast to load and therefore have a positive effect on Google rankings.

Benefits of ad quality for Ad Networks and Ad Platforms

Partner trust: Programmatic platforms and ad networks serving high quality ads to their Publisher networks, ensures a positive trusting relationship. Happy Publishers will stay with an ad network that maintains industry standards.

360 degree Compliance: Having a Compliance solution, which can be a dedicated team and or automated solution, is a great asset to have. The policing of campaigns can be promoted to Publishers to explain to them how much a network values the safety and quality control of ads before they are served, and monitored while campaigns are running.

A clean advertiser network: By detecting low quality ads, networks and publishers can contact the Advertiser and explain why the campaign was rejected and what needs to be done to fix this. That way from now on and in the future the Advertiser will ensure only campaigns meeting IAB standards will be approved. 

Higher revenues: High quality ad campaigns lead to higher CTRs, and higher revenues for Publisher ad zones, all of which benefits revenues of the ad network.

More competitive: Publishers are more likely to sign up with an ad network to monetize their ad zones if the network uses industry quality control because of the benefits it brings to Publishers. 

Industry reputation: By ensuring only high quality ads make it on the network, this enhances a wider industry reputation for the network.

We sincerely hope this article helps you understand the importance of serving high quality ads. Having an overall quality control of your supply chain ensures all stakeholders within the ad supply chain gain significant business benefits and on a larger scale, it helps build and support a healthy and sustainable online advertising industry. 

Check out AdSecure's Violations Report 2022 to discover how AdSecure has helped ensure that ad networks and publishers detect advertisments that do not meet the IAB industry standards.

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