AdSafe Quarterly Review Identifies Ad Exchanges as Highest Risk Buying Platforms for Advertisers

NEW YORK, Aug. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- AdSafe Media, the rating standard of online media, today released its second quarter review of the display advertising industry. The report, available for download at www.adsafemedia.com, focused specifically on a comparison of key performance metrics from different inventory buying channels available for advertisers.

Key findings from the report revealed:

• Highest Risk Inventory is served via Ad Exchanges. 16.9% of inventory served by Ad Exchanges was High Risk for advertising (with an AdSafe Rating below 250), 6.3% of inventory served via Ad Networks was High Risk and 3.8% of inventory served directly via Publishers was High Risk.
• Inventory transparency is the lowest on Ad Exchanges. Ad Exchanges served 64.4% IAB Category I inventory (with full transparency regarding referring URL), Ad Networks served 82.6% and Publishers directly served 97.4%.
• Publishers follow geo-targeting requirements more than any other buying channel. 1.9% of Publisher inventory fell outside of geo-targeting requirements while 3.9% of Ad Exchange inventory and 4.3% of Ad Network inventory fell outside of geo- targeting requirements.
• 49% of traffic was served via Ad Exchanges / Real-Time-Bidding Platforms / Demand Side Platforms, an upward trend from last quarter's 47% share. 33% was served via Ad Networks and 18% was served directly via Publishers.
• 790 was the AdSafe Safety Index for Q2 2010, an upward trend from last quarter's Index of 752, indicating that the overall brand safety of inventory across the display advertising ecosystem increased slightly.
• Canada, UK, Germany and Asia-Pacific were the leading destinations for impressions that fell outside of geo-targeting requirements.

According to Helene Monat Co-Founder and CEO of AdSafe, "With brand advertisers more aggressively seeking out the greater cost efficiencies and ROI available via exchanges, it's essential that brands and agencies understand both the risks and rewards of non-direct buying channels. Exchanges can clearly provide increased media efficiency but without proper brand protection safeguards, these buying channels can expose brands to unnecessary risk."

Findings in the report were based on aggregate traffic observed by AdSafe Media from April 1 – June 30th, 2010. Total traffic volume for this time period was 28.6 billion impressions.

About AdSafe Media

AdSafe Media is the rating standard of online media. AdSafe uses proprietary algorithmic modeling and human verification to rate the brand safety of content on commercially supported web pages via the AdSafe Content Rating System. AdSafe's BrandSafe Firewall enables Brands, Agencies and Ad-networks to prevent advertising from appearing on publisher web pages that do not conform to brand guidelines. AdSafe's Network Monitor enables Ad-Networks and Publishers to identify and segment problematic site content, increasing monetization of display inventory. AdSafe is headquartered in New York, NY with operations in San Francisco, CA and London, England. For more information visit www.AdSafeMedia.com.

SOURCE AdSafe Media