Setting the Record Straight

Tremor Media CEO Jason Glickman responds to a story about video ad networks that ran in MediaWeek.com

I want to address a story that ran last week in MediaWeek.com and later on Adweek.com and Brandweek.com that wrongly gives the impression that ads served by our network partner Puff.com were a deliberate attempt to defraud our advertising clients. The article quoted an unnamed source saying: “Industry observers said that some networks deceptively pump up their video ad impression numbers by running video ads that start automatically when users visit a site-sometimes below the fold, making it unlikely that viewers will actually even see the ads.” The story also wrongly implies we purposely orchestrated this placement with Puff.com. We find the story’s characterization offensive and contrary to our company’s ethics and operating standards.

During an interview, we told the reporter in no uncertain terms that although what Puff.com did was in violation of our policy and contract with all of our publishers, we are convinced that this was a rare and unfortunate mistake. In fact Puff.com wrote a letter to Tremor Media that stated: “We inadvertently ran a small number of impressions for several advertisers below the fold on one page. In the future Puff.com pledges to vehemently enforce the above the fold policy. More importantly, we accept responsibility and apologize for the error on our site and the misrepresentation in public of Tremor Media’s long standing policy to keep all advertising above the fold.” Full statement here.

In the online comments section of the article, our VP of Marketing, Shane Steele, responded: “Delivering above the fold placements is critical for our achieving brand advertisers’ goals. It has always been our policy and contractual requirement that our ads run above the fold with all of our publisher partners. Unfortunately the situation with Puff.com was mischaracterized.”

Tremor Media is committed to ensuring our advertisers run in only well-lit, brand-safe placements and we work closely with our publishers to ensure they adhere to our contractual requirements. We take this matter very seriously because we value and protect our own brand reputation as much as we do our brand advertisers’. Further, we have partnered with ContentWatch and other leading auditing technology solutions to catch these violations if they occur. In the rare instance that we find a publisher in breach of our network regulations, we correct it immediately as we did with Puff.com and provide make good impressions to our advertisers.

It was encouraging for us to hear from other journalists and analysts who were also “pitched” this story (by one of our competitors) that they decided to pass on it, recognizing that this was an isolated incident and that we have a reputation for being committed to ensuring our clients run in only brand safe, above the fold placements. We are not only disturbed that one of our competitors planted this story clearly to try and discredit Tremor Media, but we are equally troubled to learn of their attempts to propagate the misleading story by sending emails to the agency community. The truth is that this kind of publisher violation has occurred on this very competitor’s network (as it has with many of our other competitors). However, because we know these are hard to control isolated instances, we have never attempted to call out anyone else’s mistakes.

Publisher and network reliability are critical to the maturity and success of the online video space, and we see this as an opportunity to accelerate efforts to set improved industry-wide standards that are in the best interest of all constituents – advertisers, publishers, and consumers. This is a rapidly growing market with enormous potential, but more education and collaboration are needed for the video space to achieve its full potential.

Tremor Media looks forward to working with others in the space to help us lead this charge!

Jason Glickman, CEO Tremor Media