Campaign delivery policies explained

Discrepancy, under delivery tolerance, late copy policy and standards – confused? The IAB is here to help


Wednesday, 13 February 2008

Campaign delivery: are you confused?

IAB’s Ad Ops Council, consisting of publishers and agencies, is working with other industry bodies to improve the way banner and rich media campaigns are booked and delivered. There are various issues behind the scenes that can affect making an advert and it reaching the point of being viewed by the consumer. These can be both technical - such as differences between the numbers recorded by third party servers and publisher servers - or the cause of human error - such as delivering ad creative late to a publisher, missing the start of a booked campaign timeslot.

Issues such as these cost companies hundreds of thousands of pounds a year and cause a strain on resource when resolving disputes. Yet the majority of issues can be improved significantly, and even prevented, with the co-operation of the industry. Industry co-operation is where tradebodies like the IAB come in. IAB’s membership of online publishers, agencies and advertisers enable us to offer the entire industry an impartial forum for debate and agreement.

In relation to campaign delivery, the IAB has already taken many steps to make the lives of ad ops staff in agencies and publishers easier. With your help we will be able to continue making progress in this important and somewhat complex area. Below is a summary of key initiatives to help ad campaigns run more effectively

Late copy policy

In 2007 the IAB in association with the AOB launched its late copy policy. This policy states that agencies must ensure campaign creative reaches publishers on time otherwise the agency will incur a penalty based on lost impressions caused by late receipt of creative. View the full policy here.

Internet advertising standards

The Ad Ops Council recently updated the IAB’s internet advertising standards to make it easier for advertisers to select formats and place adverts on websites. By encouraging all publishers sticking to this core set of standards it allows advertisers to book cross-site campaigns and reach more consumers in a cost effective manner. View the standards here.

Under and over delivery tolerance

In collaboration with the IPA, the Ad Ops Council can now recommend a target of 5% variance on both under and over delivery of campaign impressions or clicks based on the publisher figures. Under delivery is when fewer impressions or clicks are delivered in a set campaign timeline, causing a problem for clients because they reach fewer consumers than planned. Over delivery is when too many impressions or clicks are delivered, this can be a problem for agency costs because the actual adverts are usually hosted on their servers. The Ad Ops Council did discuss establishing a standard for under delivery compensation, but all publishers have very different systems, making a standard currently very difficult. However, publishers do offer methods of compensation for over and under delivery on an individual basis and the IPA offer suggested methods for publishers to follow. For more information visit the IPA website.

Not the same as ‘discrepancy’

This new tolerance does not apply to discrepancy between publisher and third party server figures which is an entirely different issue. Internet ads are usually hosted on third party servers by the agency, this leads to both the agency measuring advert load or click, and the publisher measuring when it thinks the advert has loaded in its page. A result of having two places of measurement is a discrepancy between the agency and publisher numbers. This leads to agencies and publishers spending a lot of time and resource to decide on the cause of this discrepancy and potentially lost earnings for one or the other.

IAB’s Ad Ops Council sees discrepancy as the most significant display advertising operations issue that costs companies in the UK hundreds of thousands of pounds per year. Currently the IAB recommends a tolerance on discrepancy of 10% based on the publisher’s figures. The Council is working with the IPA to make recommendations to reduce discrepancy in the UK.