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Issues for publishers with wrong ads showing on their websites (part 2)

The presence of wrong ads on publisher websites poses issues that can have far-reaching consequences including negative user experience and damages to reputation. However, there are more problems publishers need to consider when they allow ads to run without monitoring.

Run the risk of legal and compliance issues

In some cases, wrong ads may contain controversial, misleading content, or worse, illegal, deceptive content that violates advertising regulations or infringes on intellectual property rights. For example, a vaping ad showing up on a kid-friendly site can land you in hot water. Ads for prohibited products or services, such as age-restricted or country-restricted items, is a clear and serious violation. Publishers could face penalties or legal repercussions for displaying such ads, further damaging their reputation and potentially incurring financial damages.

To avoid this situation, make sure you know the ad requirements and apply suitable geo-targeting or audience-targeting restrictions in the ad serving platform so only suitable viewers can see these ads.

Create problems with advertisers

Advertisers are paying for ad placements to their target audience who align with their brand image. When wrong ads are displayed, advertisers' objectives are not met, and they may reduce or even stop their advertising campaigns on that publisher's website. This directly impacts the publisher's advertising revenue stream. Reputable advertisers will be hesitant to associate their brands with websites that do not put effort in maintaining a quality website. However, sloppy publishers and low-quality websites create an opportunity for high-quality publishers to attract advertisers who are willing to pay premium rates for desirable ad placements.

Measure ad effectiveness with bad data

When wrong ads are displayed, it becomes difficult to accurately measure the effectiveness of legitimate advertising campaigns because data is contaminated by the wrong and irrelevant ads. Because irrelevant and expired ads have very low CTRs, they artificially push down the overall CTR of the whole site. This can hinder publishers' ability to optimize their ad placements and provide meaningful data to advertisers.

Increase workload for publishers

Identifying, reviewing, and removing wrong ads can add a significant workload to publishers' already busy schedules. This can divert resources away from other important tasks, such as content creation, website maintenance, and user engagement efforts. Therefore, it’s a good idea to find and choose a good ad server so you can automate routine ad operations such as scheduling ads and having them turn on and off at designated times.

To avoid making mistakes, make use of all available ad management tools available from the ad server. One way is to ensure ads are grouped correctly and efficiently. It is often better to apply restrictions and targeting criteria to a group of ads instead of individual ads. All ads within this group share the same settings. You do not need to manually apply the same settings to multiple ads, which is time consuming and can be inconsistent because of human mistakes. Whenever you need to make changes, you can change the group’s settings, which then be automatically applied to the ads by the ad server.

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