DoubleVerify launches realtime ad verification system

May 18, 2009 | Paul Boutin | Comments | |

DoubleVerify, a company that tracks the proper placement of online ads, officially launched what the company calls a “real-time” verification service today following a preliminary test period. The company will compete with Collective Networks and Mpire, among others.

The New York company has not identified its major clients yet, but claims that “a number of blue-chip advertisers including one of the top 3 banks, one of the top 3 telecommunication companies and one of the top 5 pharmaceutical companies” now require DoubleVerify monitoring on their ad buys.

How does it work? DoubleVerify does some human monitoring, but largely relies on a custom-built site crawler that renders Web pages and searches for wrong or misplaced ads. If there’s an error, the software program will create a screenshot of the offending page and flag it for inspection.

A chart prepared by DoubleVerify shows a real-life count of the percentage of ad impressions on five websites that did not meet the buyer’s specified terms. What’s interesting is that the chart shows all sites out of whack by 10 to 30 percent. One maverick site hit 70 percent non-compliance.

In the case study, shortly after DoubleVerify notified the sites and the ad agency that had placed the ads, four of the five sites cleaned up their act and dropped to zero non-compliance — at least for a couple of days, after which the number of mis-served ads on all sites began to creep up again. So it seems like DoubleVerify’s services will need to be ongoing.

CEO Oren Netzer said in a phone call that DoubleVerify is different from Collective, mPire, and others because “We do comprehensive verification of campaigns, for premium sites as well as ad networks. We monitor for placement of ads against inappropriate content. We verify that all terms and conditions of the deal are met. Are the ads showing up high enough on the page? Are they on the correct site channels?” Netzer said self-verifed networks have an incentive not to report and fix misplaced ads.

The company, founded a year ago, recently raised $3.5 million in an investment round led by Blumberg Capital. Additional fund came from First Round Capital, Genacast Ventures, and from unnamed individual investors.

Next Story: Plug and Play startup incubator eyes $20M for seed fund
Previous Story: Renewable Fuel Products takes $145K to turn veggie oil into fuel

Bookmark and Share

Tags: ,

Photo of Paul Boutin

About the Author, Paul Boutin

Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Thus Google will get an independent monitoring system: which is good.
  • Congrats to Oren and the team at DoubleVerify. I am the CEO of Mpire and since we were mentioned in this post, I couldn't resist commenting on it. Our company has a campaign verification and optimization technology that we've deployed to several billion impressions as well as our own publisher network, called WidgetBucks. We've been hearing from our customers that verification depth is important (where we compete with DoubleVerify) but also breadth of offering is important too which we think is unique to us like placement optimization and creative optimization. We like to think of it as the Reese's Peanut Butter cup for campaign solutions...verification and optimization are the two great tastes that go great together. We're happy to have public customers like OpenX, MTV Networks, Jones Soda, using the product. We're all tackling a big market and competition will only benefit agencies and advertisers.