New research commissioned by online content verification company Project Sunblock shows that more than a third of UK brands don’t know where their advertising is appearing online.
The research claims that
* 38 per cent of UK advertisers have no insight into where their content is appearing online.
*Nearly two thirds (62 per cent) of senior marketing professionals have no way of gaining access to real-time analytics on their marketing effort.
*About 7.78 billion display advertising impressions are served alongside brand-damaging content each year, including categories such as phishing, malware, illegal drugs, violence and pornography.
*Each year around £2.5bn could be being spent on advertising that is ending up on pornographic, illegal or abusive sites
All of which should create a market for Project Sunblock of course, which claims it remove such ad placings automatically. The findings are hardly surprising in a world in which more and more online ads are going through ad exchanges and the like; clever wheezes to remove all human influence on the business of buying and placing media.
If advertisers really are worried about this – as opposed to paying lip service to it – there is another quite simple solution: get a human. But that would cost more, of course.