Can You Trust Your Ad Exchange? New Index May Provide The Answer

It's no secret that the fast-rising practice of automated or "programmatic" selling of display ads carries a lot of risks--namely, advertisers often can't be certain which sites their ads actually ran on, or even how many people actually saw them.

Now, an analytics firm focused on programmatic ad sales has released a "global seller trust index" for the first time. Not surprisingly, Google , which boasts direct relationships with nearly every notable Web publisher, tops Pixalate's list of companies that help advertisers and agencies buy on ad exchanges and network. It's followed by the lesser-known OpenX and Rubicon Project and the even lesser-known Centro Media and Q1Media.

But what's most interesting is who isn't on the list of the top 20 among the more than 400 active companies tracked by Pixalate: some pretty well-known companies, such as AppNexus and Yahoo. (Update: I mentioned AppNexus and Rocket Fuel  originally, but Rocket Fuel is more focused on the buying side, and AppNexus is perhaps better known for its buyside service. You can see the larger list of the top 100 here.) Because the release of the index was embargoed, I couldn't reach those that didn't make the top 20 cut.

The index seems likely, in any case, to set off a bomb in the often shrouded industry. "Once it's more widely known, it's going to have an impact on sales," says IDC analyst Karsten Weide. "It's going to be very helpful for buyers." At the least, he says, it may prompt advertisers to try out firms on the top of the list if they aren't already.

The index actually measures six different aspects of ad quality: how direct a relationship with quality publishers each ad seller has, how much of the ad inventory is legitimate, the incidence of fraud (how many impressions are viewed by humans or bots), viewability, engagement such as mouse hover time or clicks, and how much inventory is sold on sketchy sites but masked to the buyer. Those are tallied into an overall score.

It's not clear yet what the methodology for each of those metrics is, so no doubt there will be kvetching by those not in the top 20. Not surprisingly, Pixalate trotted out praise from three of the top five. But Weide says the results don't surprise him. "Everything comes out about where I expected."

Pixalate founder and CEO Jalal Nasir says he felt compelled to create the index, which will come out monthly, because he thinks there's a need for metrics that go beyond reach when it comes to programmatic, particularly in real-time bidding for ad inventory. "RTB has been seen as a black box," he said in an interview. "It has no rating system at all."

The upshot, he hopes, will be that suppliers of this ad inventory will "raise the bar" and improve their accountability.

Of course, Pixalate has its own business reasons behind the index. It gets greater visibility for its products and, it must be said, sells products such as fraud detection and ad viewability services that are intended to help companies improve their offerings. Indeed, Nasir says, many of the top-rated companies use a "supply quality management system" like the one Pixalate offers, though only one, Gourmet Ads, uses a Pixalate product--in particular, analytics. No doubt Nasir will be getting calls from those below the top 20, and they're likely to be more than merely inquisitive.

Still, as programmatic heads toward taking over a majority of display advertising, new metrics are crucial to illuminate the innards of that black box.