3rd Party Ad Serving

[JamesCross]

I'm interested to know peoples opinions on third party ad serving. Our company has invested in a third party ad serving facility, DoubleClick(DART), as yet most of our advertisers still seem unconcerned about the differences between a third party system and an inhouse solution.

I'd like to know whether as a general rule people take the word of the publishers stats or only trust their own traffic reports from products such as webtrends?

[Haze]

I would check the stats yourself. Even with a well known company like doubleclick ( who also invade your users privacy in order to target there audience ) can stiff you up the bum. Its best to keep track of things on your own so you know whats really going on.

[JamesCross]

Nice analogy you just painted for me :-) Your right in what you say, although our advertisers are protected through various methods, publishers are charged for all ads served whether actually fully displayed or not!

I think one of the largest benefits of using a third party server is the ability to audit the figures issued by the publisher. Lets face it an unscrupulous publisher could quite happily sit there all day long refreshing a couple of browsers and clicking on a few ads now and again. DART prevents this sort of abuse and that can only be a good thing for online advertisers.

[Czar]

Depending on the size of your audience, and the capacity of your server, you may find that a freeware script or commercial server-based ad serving package would suit both your needs, and those of your advertisers.

The ongoing fees associated that some of the high-end outsourced solutions (such as DART, Engage Admanager, Adometer, L90adMonitor, etc) can severaly cut into your banner ad revenues.

If you have bandwidth to spare, and have a sysadmin or similar techie available to monitor the system, it would be more affordable to go with a scalable solution such as Spinbox, RealMedia, BanManPro, AdJuggler or Central Ad Pro. Each of these contains various anti-fraud measures, as well as support for password-protected access for advertisers that allows them the ability to track how many ads have been delivered, and clicked, during a given period.

If you are absolutely set on outsourcing, though, DART is probably the best solution for you. This is due to the fact that the name is recognized and respected within the industry (this psychology has a great deal to do with your advertisers' peace-of-mind), and because DART simply is one of the fastest, most reliable and most scalable systems on the market.