New online research claims a third of ads are going to porn sites and other undesirables

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.     

When asked about appearing next to negative content online, marketers voted pornographic websites as the most destructive to brand reputation. 

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.