Background
Improve Digital works with trusted demand partners to maintain a safe advertising ecosystem for publishers. In addition we provide publishers with several ways to ensure that tailored ad quality standards can be maintained, and that issues can be quickly resolved.
This article provides information of platform features and troubleshooting steps for ad quality.
Quality Assurance
Automated Checks
Improve Digital is working with industry leading partners for automated malware checks. The support team receives an automatic notification if any suspicious or malicious ads are detected, enabling immediate action.
Manual Checks
To maintain higher standards of advertiser quality, the Improve Digital team conducts daily manual quality checks on inventory. Low quality ads are blocked immediately and our deamand partners are informed of quality breaches.
Blocklisting
The blocklists can be managed in Improve Digital under the tab Settings > Blocklist. You can generate a separate blocklist for single sites, or combine multiple sites in a general blocklist.
The blocklist is checked against the RTB and Deal ID bids in the auction by checking the creative landing page URL sent in the bid response, with listed URLs being excluded from the auction.
We advise maximising the use of demand budgets by ensuring that only necessary advertisers or categories are blocked.
How to setup a blocklist
- Go to Settings > Blocklist
- Click Add to create a new blocklist, or open an existing blocklist
Tip: having fewer blocklists, or only one, makes it easier to update then in the long term. - Give the blocklist a name and selecting if the blocklist should apply to all sites or not
- Select the sites the blocklist should apply to if not all
- Now select either Categories, Advertisers, Advertiser URLs, Manual URLs or Ad Types to be blocked
- Category - Known advertiser URLs grouped by IAB categories. Discretion is advised when selecting categories as blocking a single category will block hundreds of potential advertisers and their budgets. Use of Advertiser or URLs options is advised as an alternative here.
- Advertiser - All known URLs responding to this advertiser are listed here and can be selected for blocking.
- Advertiser URL - known advertiser URLs are listed here and can be selected for blocking.
- Manual URL - enables any URL to be blocked. Blocking a top-level domain will also block all subdomains. If a subdomain is blocked, the top-level domain is not blocked automatically. It is best to use the 'root' domain rather than the entire URL. A list of URLs have be uploaded using the Bulk Upload option within the +New URL(s) option. List the URLs in a .txt file, ensuring the URLs are only the root domain in the following format: example.com
- Ad Type - Defined by the IAB, specific ad types can be blocked, such as In-Banner Video Ad or Audio Ad (Auto Play). Not all the buying technologies are able to read this parameter therefore known advertisers and buyers of these ad types can be blocked if necessary.
Pricing Control Centre
In addition to advertising blocklist, publishers can use floor prices to maintain a level of quality. Usually lower quality ads are served by buying impressions with the lowest CPMs.
As an alternative to blocking advertiser you can also choose to manage the advertiser or buyer using pricing rules in the Pricing Control Center. For more information read the Pricing Control article.
Handling Quality Issues
- Use the Ad Output Information
- Right click on the page and then click Inspect
- Find the ad on the page with the element inspector...
or search for 'improvedigital_ad'
- Use the information to update your blocklist and pricing rules as shown above.
- Use the Impression Context ID
- Right click on the page and then click Inspect
- Go to Network
- Search for the Improve Digital response
- In Response copy the code and send to Support who can assist in finding the information you can use to block the creative.
- If you are not able to take one of these steps... please contact our Support team and provide as much information as possible - this helps us check data and detect the source. Possible information includes:
- Date and time the ad was seen, down to the hour at least
- Device, e.g. iPhone, Android, Windows PC, Mac
- Browser and version, e.g. Google Chrome Version 54.0.2840.98 (64-bit)
- Screenshots of ad
- Site where it appeared, and Improve Digital Placement ID if possible
- Firebug/debugger trace/or source code of the page where it appeared (if possible)
- If a redirect ad, the URLs in the chain - a screen recording can help here
- Geo location of device, e.g. Oslo, Norway
Note: these instructions apply to Google Chrome on desktop. If you're using a different browser please refer to their instructions for how to do this. Most browsers have similar capabilities.